Page 206 of Fractured Loyalties

Instead, I straighten, turn, and walk.

The air at the exit is cooler, sharper, hitting my face like something that wants to wake me. The steel door closes behind me with that same final thud. The night outside smells of rain and smoke.

I should feel lighter, emptied out. I don’t.

I feel worse.

Because Dom was right about one thing: The distraction followed me in. And it follows me out, too.

Her face. Her voice. The choice she keeps tearing out of my hands.

Mara.

Always Mara.

I slide into the car, starting the engine, it growls to life beneath me, steady, unyielding. I grip the wheel tighter than I need to, the leather creaking under my hands as I pull into the street.

The city stretches out, black glass and red neon bleeding into the wet asphalt. Everything feels sharper, too bright, too loud, like the world is mocking the emptiness clawing at me.

I should feel clean. That’s what the club was supposed to be—a purge. A place to take the edge off before it cuts me open. But all I’ve done is prove Dom right. I walked in empty and left emptier.

Mara.

Her name pounds with the rhythm of the wipers across the windshield. Her face keeps flashing in every reflection—shop windows, the rearview mirror, the curve of a passerby’s jaw in the crosswalk. She’s everywhere and nowhere, like the city itself is bending around her absence.

I remember her standing in my apartment, defiant, voice trembling but steady enough to cut:You mean you’re not giving me the choice.

She thought leaving made her free. She thought walking out the door meant she was done with me.

She has no idea.

I take a corner too fast. The tires spit water across the curb, horns blaring behind me. My pulse doesn’t change. My head is too full of her. The way she looked at me, the way her body leaned toward mine, she’s mine. Whether she’s ready to admit it or not.

The city blurs past, each block pulling me closer to the inevitable thought: Caleb. The name alone scrapes at my patience. He’s moving near her, circling the clinic, testing the lines.

If he touches her, he dies.

No—when. Because I’ll make sure of it.

But it isn’t just about Caleb anymore. It’s about Mara’s delusion that she can walk away. That she has a life outside of me.

She doesn’t.

My jaw locks as I cut through another turn, the lights of the clinic coming into view in the distance. Even from here, I can see the faint glow spilling from the glass, the shape of the building like a beacon against the dark. She’s inside. Probably still pretending she can live like before, filing papers, talking to Celeste, keeping her head down.

Like the world won’t keep clawing at her until there’s nothing left.

She needs control. She craves it even as she denies it. I felt it in every word she spit at me, every step she tried to take away. She wants someone to take it from her. She wants me to take it.

And I will.

Dom said emotion ruins control. Maybe he’s right. But Mara doesn’t ruin my control. She sharpens it. She’s the fracture that makes the whole structure stronger.

And I’ll prove it.

Chapter 35 – Mara - The Visit

The clinic is busy today. Too busy for the jagged knot in my chest. Phones ring, shoes squeak against polished floors, the printer spits out forms with its steady rhythm. I’m at the reception desk with one of the nurses, reviewing intake schedules for next week because the system glitched again. The receptionist had to step away, so I slid into her chair, pulling up the files myself.