Page 74 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

Months have teeth, but they dull when you stop counting. The city doesn’t feel like a place that holds time. It just replaces faces, burns down corners, rebuilds them with glass, and waits for the same sins to repeat.

But in this apartment—my apartment—the air feels different. Steadier.

Mara is at the counter, rolling sleeves up her forearms while she sorts files for the clinic. Her hair is pinned high, with the neat braid she prefers, a strand loose where I pulled it earlier, and she didn’t bother fixing it. She isn’t nervous about her mess showing anymore.

The window throws pale light across her face. For months, I watched her carry shadows like armor. Now she wears mine instead. And she doesn’t flinch.

She doesn’t know I’m watching yet. That’s how I prefer it. The way she chews the corner of her lip while reading. The way her hand hovers over a page, as if she’s rewriting something in her head before she moves on.

I never believed in peace. Still don’t. But I’ve carved out something sharper. A version of silence that doesn’t demand penance. And she’s the reason.

When I shift, she looks up, eyes cutting through the light. “You’re staring,” she says.

“Yes.”

“You're going to say why?”

“No.” I walk to her. “I don’t explain myself to you.”

Her mouth curves faintly—not a smile, but the echo of one. “And yet, you do.”

I stop close enough to cage her against the counter. My hand lifts to her throat, thumb resting where her pulse ticks. She leans into it, no hesitation, no fear.

That’s the difference months make.

Her pulse beats steady under my thumb, not racing, not afraid. The first time I touched her this way, she froze. Now she tilts her chin and offers me more of her throat, like she knows it belongs in my hand.

“You still test me,” I say.

Her lips part. “Do I pass?”

“You don’t need to.” My mouth grazes her ear. “You’re mine, pass or fail.”

She exhales, a soft sound that carries heat. “Good thing I stopped running, then.”

My grip tightens, not cruel, not gentle—just enough for her body to remember where she belongs. Her knees flex, a shift of weight that betrays how fast she opens for me now. Months ago, she would have tried to hide it. Now she lets me see. She wants me to see.

I push her back into the counter, press my hips to hers, and feel the hunger spark sharp and instant. The stack of clinic files wobbles under her hand. She doesn’t move them. She spreads her legs instead, the defiance of a woman who no longer fears what it means to want.

“Still messy,” I murmur against her mouth. “You should know by now I don’t tolerate distractions on my counters.”

“Then move them,” she whispers back.

I almost laugh. Almost. I slide the files aside with one arm, scattering papers across marble, and lift her onto the counter where she belongs. The sound she makes is low, needy, not afraid. Never afraid anymore.

Her thighs wrap me in, bare under the dress she wears for no one but me. She doesn’t ask permission when her mouth meets mine, but the way she leans into my hand when I close harder around her throat tells me she remembers the rules. She remembers who wrote them.

I break the kiss long enough to see her eyes—blown wide, wet around the edges, daring me to take more.

“You were made for this,” I tell her.

She bites my lip, hard enough to taste copper. “So were you.”

The sound in my chest doesn’t feel like a laugh or a growl.

It’s something worse. Something better. I grip her wrists and slam them flat against the counter, pinning her while I grind against the heat waiting for me under thin fabric.

She arches up, chasing friction like she’s forgotten what patience means.

“I own your mornings,” I remind her.

“You own all of me,” she says, raw, unflinching.

The admission should feel like victory. It feels like peace.

I kiss her until I feel her melt, her body caged under mine, her pulse drumming against my hand, her voice spilling truths that don’t sound like fear anymore.

The phone buzzes against the counter, sharp enough to cut through the air between us. Mara stiffens in my grip, then exhales like she wants to ignore it. I don’t move at first. I want to keep her pinned here, her pulse under my hand, her body under mine.

But she tilts her chin toward the phone. “It might be Celeste.”

I release her wrists, slow, unwilling. Her skin stays marked under my fingers, faint imprints that will fade too soon. She slides off the counter, smoothing her dress like I didn’t just crush her against the marble. Her composure has teeth now. She wears it so well.

She collects the folder of clinic files she’d been sorting before I interrupted her. She keeps working, sliding the papers back into order, even with the heat still rising off her skin.

I pick up the phone. The name glows on the screen: Celeste Varon.

Mara’s head lifts, eyes brightening in a way they never do with anyone else. She plucks the phone from my hand before I decide whether to answer. “Celeste, hi.”

Her voice softens, careful but genuine. She listens while Celeste asks questions—the clinic schedule, the intake files Mara had been updating, her health.

Alec’s voice drifts faintly in the background, steady and grounding.

Mara’s mouth curves, not quite a smile, but the closest thing she gives the world outside this apartment.

She laughs once, brief and unguarded, and the sound digs into me in ways nothing else does.

When she passes the phone back, Celeste has one more line. “We’d like to see her soon. Both of you, if you’ll come.”

I don’t answer right away. Mara’s watching me too closely. I press the phone to my ear. “We’ll see.”

Celeste sighs. Not for Mara—for me. “Just don’t let her forget she has a place outside your walls.”

I hang up before Mara can read it on my face.

She sets the files aside and studies me anyway. “They want to see me. At the clinic.”

“Of course they do.”

Her eyes are steady, clear in a way that unsettles me. “You’ll come with me.”

It isn’t a question.

I almost tell her no, that their world and mine were never meant to overlap.

But then I see the way her hand lingers on the folder of clinic records, the way her fingers tap against the paper as if reminding herself that life exists there too.

Hope threads through her shoulders. Not fear. Not shame. Hope.

“Yes,” I say. “I’ll come.”

Relief softens her mouth. She doesn’t thank me. She doesn’t have to. She knows the only reason I agreed is because she asked.

__________________________________________________________

Lydia shows up two days later, unannounced, as she always does.

The buzzer rattles, and when I open the door, she’s already brushing past me, tablet under her arm, coat slung across one shoulder.

She doesn’t glance at Mara, who’s curled on the couch, though I can tell she clocked every detail of her posture and expression the second she walked in.

“You don’t answer texts anymore,” she says, dropping the tablet onto the counter. “Either you’re bored of me or you’ve finally learned how to pretend your life is stable.”

“I answer when there’s something worth answering,” I tell her.

She snorts, looking me over like she’s checking for blood. “And here I thought I’d be scraping you off the dock by now. Instead, you look…domesticated.” Her eyes flick toward Mara, sharp, assessing. “Almost civil.”

Mara lifts her gaze from the folder in her lap. She doesn’t shrink under Lydia’s stare. She just says, evenly, “You don’t have to stay if you don’t like what you see.”

The corner of Lydia’s mouth tilts. “Not bad. She finally bites.”

I step in, the edge in my voice enough to turn Lydia back toward me. “You came here for a reason.”

“Yeah,” she says. “To tell you I’m done pulling threads for free. You want eyes, you pay. You want cleaners, you pay more. And if Mara becomes a liability, I don’t burn for you. Not anymore.”

Her bluntness used to needle me. Now, I almost respect it. “Fair.”

“Good,” she says, and picks up her tablet again. She pauses at the door, looks back once at Mara. “Careful what world you think you’ve chosen. Sometimes men like him don’t let you choose twice.”

Mara doesn’t flinch. She just holds Lydia’s stare until the door shuts. When the lock clicks, she exhales, a soft sound meant only for herself.

Later that night, Dom calls. The club hums faintly through the phone, bass leaking down the line like an old heartbeat. His voice is silk cut with warning.

“You’ve been absent too long,” he says. “People notice.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should. Detachment is currency here. You bring your…entanglement into my circle, and I cut you out. Permanently.”

I lean against the window, watching Mara at the table, her head bent over her notes. “Then cut.”

Dom laughs, but it isn’t humor. “You’re softer already. That’s how it starts. You think it makes you stronger, but it doesn’t. She’ll unravel you, Elias.”

“She already has,” I answer.

A silence stretches. Then, his tone turns cold, professional again. “Then we’re done.”

The line goes dead.

I set the phone down. For the first time in years, I feel no hunger for that world. Not the rules, not the games, not the staged power. I already have the only surrender I ever wanted, and it isn’t something I trade for an evening.

Mara glances up from her files. She doesn’t ask who it was. She just watches me with those beautiful eyes, quiet, knowing, as if she’s piecing together exactly what I just cut loose.

And I let her see it.

The apartment is quiet when Dom’s voice has faded into nothing but memory.

The only sound left is the scratch of Mara’s pen moving across her notes, the soft rustle of clinic papers as she files them into neat stacks.

She looks at peace in a way I never thought she’d allow herself—barefoot, hair loose, glasses perched low on her nose.

Ordinary on the surface. Mine beneath it.

I cross the room and stand over her shoulder. She doesn’t startle anymore when I come close. She tilts her head, waiting.

“Another patient intake?” I ask.

“Two. One referred by Alec, one walk-in.” She taps the folder. “I told Celeste I’d take over this week’s scheduling. Easier for her.”

“You still plan to keep working there.”

Her eyes cut up to mine, steady. “Yes. That’s part of me you don’t get to take.”

I study her, the way she says it—without tremor, without asking permission. A line drawn, not as defiance but as choice. It stirs something in me sharper than pride.

“Then keep it,” I say.

She blinks, as if she didn’t expect me to grant it so cleanly. Then her lips curve, small and private. “I will.”

I rest my hand on the top sheet in her folder, pinning it to the table until her pen stills. “But here,” I murmur, “you belong to me.”

Her pupils widen, pulse jumping in her throat. “I know.”

“Say it.”

Her voice is quiet but firm. “I belong to you.”

The words sink into me like iron setting. They aren’t surrender. They’re a vow.

I press my mouth to her temple, lingering there long enough that the world narrows to that single contact. Then I slide my hand into her hair and tug lightly until her head tips back, forcing her eyes to mine.

“You chose this,” I remind her.

“I did.”

“And if it consumes you?”

“Then it consumes me,” she says, no hesitation. “At least I’ll know I wasn’t caged. I walked in with my eyes open.”

Something shifts inside me, a quiet quake I don’t let anyone else see. She has no idea how rare it is—for someone to face me and not mistake possession for chains. She knows the difference. And she still stays.

Later, when she’s put her papers away and the city settles into its midnight hum, I slide the pistol I took from Caleb onto the table between us. She freezes, recognizing it at once.

“This was his,” I say. “It’s yours now. You decide what to do with it.”

Her hand hovers before she finally picks it up. Her fingers curl around the grip, steady. She stares at it for a long moment, then sets it back down with a finality that tells me everything.

“I don’t need it,” she says. “I have you.”

The answer brands itself into me. I cover the gun with a cloth and lock it away. A relic, nothing more.

When I come back, she’s watching me with that unreadable calm that hides her storms. I take her hand and place it flat against my chest. My heart answers with a steady, brutal rhythm.

“Still here,” I tell her.

Her lips part. Her eyes soften. She leans into me until her forehead rests against mine. “Still here,” she echoes.

And for the first time in years, I believe in the words.

Not because the world is safe. It never will be.

Not because I am redeemed. I never will be.

But because she chose this darkness, chose me, and she isn’t running.

Her hand tightens in mine, and I know—whatever storms rise next, whatever fires burn—we will face them together.