Page 56 of Fractured Devotion (Tainted Souls #1)

The moment she leaves, the air collapses around me.

I can’t move. My body aches in ways I’ve never known. She stripped me bare, and not just my skin. I am emptied out and hollowed, every piece of me laid bare under her hands and words.

The cuffs are off, but I feel them still, like ghosts pressing into my wrists, mocking me.

I sit there, breathless, staring at the space she left behind.

How did it get this far?

How did I let her undo me so thoroughly?

I trace the feeling back, hunting for the moment I lost control, but everything blurs together in a haze of her voice, her touch, her bite.

Was it when I first saw her eyes? When she leaned in close and whispered threats like they were love songs?

Or was it long before that, in the first breathless moment I realized I wasn’t studying her at all? I was already hers.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped steering.

And now I’m drifting fast toward something I can’t escape.

I realize, with a bitter, sinking weight, that I don’t want to escape.

I am already too far gone.

I taste her on my tongue.

I watch the door for long minutes after it shuts, half-hoping she’ll return, half-praying she won’t.

The weight of her promise sinks deeper with every breath.

She owns me now. And not just my body.

My mind. My secrets. My loyalty.

“You’re going to take me there,” she had whispered, her voice curling around me like silk, a command I couldn’t escape.

You’re going to unlock every door and hand me every key. Then you’ll watch me burn their empire to the ground.

Her words loop through my mind, sinking deeper and scorching everything in their path.

I drag myself off the bed, my every muscle protesting. My hands shake as I dress, the marks of her nails burned into my chest, hips, and throat.

I should hate her for it.

But I don’t.

Instead, I crave more.

I stumble to the terminal, my heart racing with the same dizzying mix of lust and dread.

The drive is still there. Untouched.

But it doesn’t matter. It was never mine to wield. Not anymore.

I run my fingers over the cold metal casing, hearing her voice echo in my skull.

We will walk into the fire together.

The words are carved into me now, irreversible.

I close the terminal, my breath tight.

There is no running from her.

And I don’t want to.

I can’t stop what comes next.

But I can stand beside her when it all burns.

I sit in my apartment long after she’s gone, unable to shake the coil tightening in my chest. My skin still burns where she touched me, but it isn’t the bruises that keep me rooted here.

It’s the unease.

Something shifted, and I need to know when. Where. How.

I rise and move toward the back room, pressing my palm to the biometric lock on the hidden door. It clicks open, revealing the dim glow of my private surveillance hub.

Screens line the wall, feeds from every corner of the clinic and beyond, each one watching silently.

I sit, the chair creaking beneath me, and pull up the archive footage.

I start with her apartment.

She looks calm. Too calm.

She moves differently now. Measured and gentle, but not submissive. There’s a current running under her skin that wasn’t there before.

I watch her move around her space, making tea, sitting at her desk, and reading.

Then she retrieves something.

A box.

I freeze the frame, leaning closer.

Her fingers trail the edges of it with reverence, her face locked in a look I’ve never seen from her before—haunted and hungry all at once.

Where did it come from?

I rewind, scanning back through the footage.

There.

My stomach knots.

Alec.

Of course he’ll be involved in it.

Jealousy rips through me, fast and sharp.

Alec has always been the thorn under my skin when it comes to her. Too righteous. Too close.

I rewind further, watching her face the first time she brings in the box.

Her expression cracks, every wall she ever built crumbling in the privacy of her apartment. She sifts through the contents slowly, delicately. Photos. Documents. Letters. Secrets she shouldn’t have.

And every now and then since, she goes back to it.

Every decision she’s made since then traces back to that box.

I lean back in my chair, my breath shallow.

Whatever is inside that box changed everything.

I have to know.

I watch the footage again, slower this time, studying every detail of her reactions and mapping her shifts.

Her whole war started here.

And I won’t survive this unless I get to the heart of it.

My breath stays uneven as I sit back, locking my gaze on the paused frame of her cradling that damn box.

That’s the epicenter. The ignition point.

I switch to my backup tablet, syncing it with the archives. I watch it again, zooming in closer this time and following the way her hands linger on the papers, the trembling in her fingers when she touches one of the envelopes.

Her expression isn’t just pain. It’s recognition.

I trace back further, every frame dragging me deeper.

I rewind the footage again, watching more carefully.

She’s on the phone, her voice low, her face unreadable. It’s almost midnight.

Minutes later, she leaves her apartment.

She comes back around three in the morning, clutching the box tightly, her hands white-knuckled. Her face is blank, but her eyes are stormy.

I narrow my gaze. Alec shows up early that morning, just after she returns. He doesn’t look surprised. He never does around her.

I can’t hear what they say, but the timing tightens a knot in my chest.

It doesn’t matter where she got it from. Alec knows. He always knows.

That box isn’t just some lost relic.

It’s a weapon.

I clench my fist, fury curling in my gut.

I can’t believe I let myself be blindsided.

I lean forward, staring at the frozen footage of her curled on the floor, clutching the contents of that box, weeping into the night.

My chest tightens.

I need that box.

I need what she knows.

Because without it, I’m navigating blind through a collapsing maze.

And I don’t plan to be buried under this war.

I lock my gaze on the screen, a new determination sparking hot inside me.

I’m going to get to the truth.

No matter what it costs.

Fatigue drags at me, but my gaze stays rooted to the surveillance feed, wide open, unwilling to blink.

She’s asleep now, finally.

It’s the first time all night she’s stopped moving.

I watch her steady breathing from the camera in her apartment. Her limbs are tangled in her sheets, her face softened by exhaustion. She doesn’t know I’ve been watching every second.

I rewind the footage to the moment she tucked the box beneath her desk, the exact spot burned into my memory.

I know where it is.

And I know she won’t wake up anytime soon.

This is my chance.

I rise from the chair, grabbing my backup tablet and sliding it into my coat pocket.

My steps are purposeful and steady as I make my way down the hall toward her apartment.

The building is quiet, the hour still early, with no one around to notice me.

I move with practiced ease, each step measured.

Her door is just ahead. It’s familiar, dangerously so.

I slip my hand into my coat pocket, my fingers brushing over the tablet’s cool surface.

I pull it out with care, glancing at the live feed as I approach her door.

She’s still asleep, deep, unmoving, and lost in whatever dreams have claimed her for the moment.

My steps remain steady, my focus sharp, my every move deliberate.

I reach for the door without a sound, the lock familiar beneath my fingertips. I disable it with a practiced flick of my wrist.

The door opens with a hush, and I slip inside.

The air is thick with her scent—lavender and skin, soft and sharp.

I glance toward the bedroom. She doesn’t stir.

Good.

I move straight to the desk, crouching low. My hands work quickly, pulling out the box with precision.

There it is.

The key to everything.

I set it carefully on her desk, sliding open the lid with careful movements.

My eyes rake over the contents—photos, old letters, a thin notebook worn at the spine.

I pull out my tablet and begin snapping photos, documenting every page and every name.

Piece by piece, I scan it all, my pulse steady but my breath tight.

It’s not just old letters and photographs.

It’s raw history—evidence of her family’s ruin.

Newspaper clippings about her father’s death, personal letters that hint at darker and deeper circumstances surrounding her mother’s demise.

Her childhood drawings, scribbled in shaky hands, some depicting masked figures and locked doors.

My throat tightens.

I’ve seen her footage. I’ve watched her broken on old tapes and watched her trained like a puppet.

But this… this feels different.

This isn’t conditioning. This is her grief laid bare.

I see pieces of her here I’ve never touched. Never owned.

And something sharp and unfamiliar twists in my chest, something that feels like guilt.

I finish, repacking the box exactly as I found it and placing it back beneath the desk with careful precision.

She’ll never know.

I slip out, locking everything behind me.

As I close my apartment door behind me again, the weight of what I’ve done settles.

Now I have her truths.

And I can’t stop wondering if they’ve already wrecked me too.

Today, every one of her secrets becomes mine.

I don’t even wait to take off my coat.

I sit in the surveillance room again, pulling up the photos one by one on the tablet. The contents glare back at me, raw and undeniable.

I comb through every letter, every page, and every scrawled name.

Her father wasn’t just a bystander. He was a whistleblower. A threat.

Her mother didn’t simply die. She was erased.

Everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve ever thought I knew about her, fractures.

Her childhood wasn’t stolen by accident. It was meticulously dismantled by the very hands I once believed were mine to admire.

My breath comes slower now, but heavier. There’s something old and violent coiling inside my chest, something that feels like rage.

Rourke.

That bastard.

This wasn’t research.

It wasn’t science.

It was cruelty. Precision-forged cruelty.

I lean back in my chair, staring at her photos, at the fragile scraps of the little girl she once was.

And it hits me harder than I’m willing to admit.

I want her. I’ve always wanted her.

But this? This isn’t about obsession anymore.

It’s about retribution.

I can’t stop the dark smile that pulls at my lips.

They’re going to pay for this.

Every last one of them.

Rourke, his circle, and anyone who ever touched her.

They think they’ve been gods in this story.

But they forget what happens when you turn the devil against you.

I tap the screen, my mind already calculating, already drawing the first lines of war.

I’ll burn them down.

For her.

For me.

For everything they took.

And when it’s over?

There’ll be nothing left but ash.