Page 69 of His To Erase

I rub the side of my jaw, eyes flicking across her screen again. The hidden messages, the silent spirals, the dreams she wrote down.

“And what happens if it’s true?”

I grip the edge of the desk hard enough for my knuckles to turn white. “That depends on whether I get to her first.”

“Steven—”

“I’ve let her believe too many lies,” I snap. The words tear out of me. “I let her walk straight into the mouth of a fucking lion while I sat here watching. Waiting for what?”

My voice drops. “No more space. No more waiting. She wants to play house with a monster, fine. But I’m the one who knows what’s hunting her. And I’m done playing nice.”

There’s a long silence on the line. The kind that feels like the calm before something shatters.

“Tell me where to be.”

I sigh, rubbing my hand down my face. Knowing he’s going to have his attention split. “Eyes on the restaurant.”

“You sure you’re in the right headspace for this?”

“No,” I answer flatly. “But I’m the only one who knows how this ends.”

And I’ve already made one mistake with her—I won’t make it twice.

The house is too fucking quiet. The blanket she curled up in still sits crumpled on the couch, and her mug rests by the sink, half full and cold. I drag the knife from my duffel and slam it into the butcher block. The sound echoes through the room.

I don’t do rage. Not like this. Not since I buried the last man who deserved it.

But Ani makes me forget the rules. She’s in there now—to the bone. Threaded through the wreckage like she belongs there.

I sink into the chair I haven’t used since the day I opened the file that led me here.

Frank’s name is still stamped across the top.

I stare at it like a fucking bull seeing red, while I go over them again.

It’s a list of shell companies, an inheritance tied to property in Puerto Rico with the name scratched out in every file except one.

I open my laptop and pull up the encrypted drive Travis sent over weeks ago. I’d skipped this file before because it all looked like the same shit we already had on him.

This time, I open the folder labeled REDACTED – R. INHERITANCE CLAIM.

And this time… I find something else. A document that looks like it’s only half scanned, and burnt along the edges.

It looks like a will. It’s signed with a signature I’ve seen before—only once.

There’s also a surveillance photo, and standing next to Frank like a shadow from the past, is someone I recognize.

But it’s the clause at the bottom of the page that stops me cold.

In the event of my passing, my estate shall pass to one A. R., my blood and only heir. No other claim shall override this.

I go still.

Everything in me locks down. It’s a half-buried detail—one I brushed off because it didn’t feel relevant.

My blood.

I sit back, piecing it all together. This isn’t just some vague reference. This is a legal transfer of power. This isn’t about Frank laundering money or manipulating girls anymore. This is about Frank having control.

Now I can’t fucking breathe because if I’m right, then she’s not just tangled in this, she’s the center of it.

And she doesn’t even know it.

Or she does and she’s lying through her teeth while she sleeps in my bed, and moans my name while she’s playing me.

I don’t know which truth is worse.

I press my hands into the edge of the desk, trying to stay calm—but my knuckles are white and the only thing I can think about is her face, and the way she looked when she flinched in her sleep. The way she sounded when she whispered, “Don’t let him take me.”

Fuck.

She’s mine. That’s never changed—not since the first time I saw her.

Flashing eyes, smart ass mouth, and that untouchable fire buried beneath all that fear.

I wanted her then. I want her now. But if she’s tied to this—if she’s been protecting Frank— I don’t know if I want to drag her home… or punish her for it.

She knows something. But does she know who he really is?

She sure as fuck doesn’t know who I am. Because if she did—if she had any idea what I’ve done for less than what she’s worth—She wouldn’t have left my house.

She wouldn’t have gotten in his car. And she sure as fuck wouldn’t be looking at another man like he could give her a future I haven’t already decided for her.

I pace across the room, heat crawling up the back of my neck like a fuse begging to be lit. Every part of me is wired and crackling. I'm halfway to the door when my phone buzzes on the desk.

Travis: You’re gonna want to see this.

The file hits my inbox a second later. It’s a timestamped image with surveillance footage with low res, and grainy as hell. But not so grainy that I can’t make out the woman in it.

No. Fucking. Way.

My vision narrows and all I hear is static. I’d recognize that face anywhere, but it can’t be her. It’s not possible. But the longer I stare, the more certain I am.

She has the same dark eyes, the same slope of her mouth and the same defiant tilt to her jaw—like the whole world could fall and she’d dare it to land on her first.

My thoughts snap straight to that night, when all I could see was a gun pointed at her head. Her body dragged forward like a shield, and his voice behind her.

“One move and I paint the walls with her.”

I’d never moved so fast in my life. Then there was the scream that’s haunted my nights every day since. I came to with blood in my mouth and a hollow feeling in my chest that’s never healed.

She was gone.

It was taken outside a building I already flagged once—a shell corp buried under layers of offshore money and fake tax IDs. It’s one of his.

Which means this wasn’t random. She wasn’t spotted on the street out and about, this wasn’t an accident.

Was she working? Was she complicit?

No. No fucking way. That’s not her. That’s not—but I don’t know anymore because if she’s been here this whole time…Why the hell didn’t she say anything? Why disappear without a trace?Why let me believe it?

My hands curl into fists at my sides as my jaw locks, and my pulse pounds like a countdown I can’t hear the end of.

None of this makes any sense. Unless—unless he’s using her. Unless he found a way to keep her under his thumb. But even then—how the fuck has she stayed hidden this long? There’s no fucking way she stayed willingly. I can’t believe that.

I shut the file. I don’t need more fucking questions, I need answers. Real ones. The kind that bleeds when you cut them open, and leave a trail.

I know exactly where to start. Picking up my phone again, I dial and he picks up on the first ring.

“Tell me you’re packing a go-bag,” he mutters.

“I’m not calling you to babysit,” I snap.

“No?” A pause. “You sound like you’re about to burn something down.”

“I am.”

“...Shit.” I hear a rustle—probably him grabbing a pistol or sliding on his coat. “Talk to me.”

I’m not sure I can say without losing control. If I open my mouth, I don’t know what’s going to come out.

“I’ve been looking in the wrong direction,” I mutter. “I thought Frank’s interest in Ani was nothing more than a piece of ass he couldn’t get out of his system, but it’s more than that.”

“She’s connected?”

“She has to be. It’s too clean. All the data points line up. How did we miss this?”

“And you’re sure she doesn’t know?”

“I don’t think so.” I grind my jaw. “But if she’s been lying to me—”

“You gonna kill her?”

My blood goes cold.

“No,” I say flatly. “But I’ll make damn sure no one else touches her.”