Page 224 of His To Erase

I lean down and brush a loose strand of hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear. Her breath stays steady, and she doesn’t flinch, so I pull the blanket higher over her bare shoulders, covering what I’ve just spent hours uncovering.

She looks soft like this—peaceful in a way that guts me, and breakable in a way that makes me want to tear the world apart just to keep it from touching her.

My body moves on instinct, every muscle is coiled with purpose. Something colder is waking up in my chest again, something that doesn’t sleep just because she is.

When I get to the kitchen, I grab the phone just as the screen lights up again and everything in me goes still.

TRAVIS: Location just pinged off a secondary line he hasn’t used in months. Sending coordinates now.

A second message follows with a dropped pin. It’s an old warehouse near the outskirts of town. One I’ve been to before. I stare at the dot, and everything inside me coils tight.

Another text comes through.

TRAVIS: Got visual confirmation. I think you should wait. I’m thirty minutes out.

I pace the kitchen, but everything inside me is chaos. Controlled only by habit. This was supposed to be clean. Simple. I was going to put him down with cold hands and a clear conscience, no loose ends.

But this isn’t about revenge anymore.

It’s about her.

The girl curled up in the other room with nothing but a blanket and my name still drying on her lips. The one who somehow fucking clawed her way into my veins without even trying. The same girl who let me wreck her without knowing who I really was.

I rake a hand through my hair, grabbing the phone from the counter, and open the photo I’ve been staring at since this afternoon.

My eyes catch on the man next to her—and just like that, everything slows. I can make out enough to know something’s wrong. If he’s been holding onto her all these years as leverage—Then I just move up the timeline. He dies either way.

I don’t even want to think about what it’ll mean if she’s there willingly. There’s no way. But if I’m wrong—If he’s got his claws deep enough to twist her loyalty, then I’ll rip the truth out of whoever put her there. Even if I have to bury them all to do it.

I set the phone down, already moving for the jacket I threw on a kitchen chair. The one that’s lined with tools most people don’t believe still exist. I draw the silencer from one of my inner pockets and my hand steadies the second it touches steel. This is what I was made for.

I run through the entry points in my head—warehouse, north side, two guards minimum, rear door coded. There won’t be a back exit for him and I won’t need one for me.

I push through the door, stepping into the night without a sound. Her scent still clings to me—peach, sweat, and the wild ache of something I shouldn’t have touched. I memorize it, then lock it down.

She’s going to lose her shit when she wakes up and finds the bed cold. But if I move fast—if I’m smart—I’ll be back before those lashes even lift.At least that’s the plan.

The hallway’s quiet, but I don’t slow down. Every motion is second nature—etched into me like a scar. You don’t lose that kind of control when it was the only thing that ever kept you alive.

I pull out my phone and start to type—something simple. Telling her I’m not gone, just handling something and I’ll be back.

My thumb is still pressed to the screen when my boots hit the sidewalk. I’m too fucking distracted and too wrapped up in the echo of her voice whispering‘yours’like it meant more than surrender, to notice the brush of pressure at the side of my neck. It doesn’t register as a threat until it’s already done.

Something’s wrong.

And I’m already too late.

My vision tilts as my phone slips from my hand, skittering across the pavement with a hollow scrape. I lurch sideways, reaching for a lamppost that isn’t fucking there and my knees hit asphalt a second later.

“Mother—fuck?—”

My voice comes out slurred and distant. My muscles feel like they're firing in all the wrong directions. I reach for the blade under my jacket, fingers twitching for steel—but I’m too late.

A boot slams into my ribs, flipping me onto my back and pain flashes, but it’s already fading—dulled by whatever cocktail they just pumped into my bloodstream.

The world tilts—fractured into sharp angles and smeared shadows, like reality can’t decide what shape to take.

A figure steps into view, kneeling beside me, calm as hell.