Page 46 of Marked to Be Mine (Erased #1)

Reaper

“Take your time,” Maeve had said hours ago, her fingers lingering on my shoulder before she slipped outside.

That gentle pressure still burned against my skin, an anchor to the present as I excavated my past. I’d needed space to face whatever truths waited in these files without her witnessing my reaction.

The safehouse was unnaturally quiet. Each keystroke echoed against bare walls, matching the accelerated rhythm of my heartbeat. Through the window, I caught glimpses of Maeve lounging under the awning, giving me distance while staying close enough to reach.

I poured another cup of coffee—my third, or maybe fourth. The silence in the house felt oppressive, making each tap on the keyboard sound like a gunshot. My reflection in the black mirror of Maeve’s laptop screen looked haggard, eyes red-rimmed from hours of staring.

Ronan Graves. The name sat differently in my mind now—less like a revelation and more like a weight.

For some reason, I expected the mere knowledge of my name to trigger a whole new wave of memories, giving me full access to the man I once was.

But it didn’t. My mind remained filled with memories I had put together earlier—one where Brock was my best friend and partner, and then the biggest betrayal of my life.

Perhaps it was a good thing, though. What I had seen from back then wasn’t much better than the monster Brock had turned me into.

The two words that entirely shaped my identity still tasted new.

Foreign and familiar simultaneously. I repeated them silently as my fingers moved across the keyboard, breaking through encryption after encryption.

It wasn’t long before my attention shifted from my name to the endless pile of information that we had to go through.

The first database yielded my criminal records. Not the sanitized personnel file from Oblivion, but actual police reports. Three assault charges in Chicago. Aggravated battery in Detroit. Suspected involvement in a string of protection rackets in Boston.

I pushed away from the table, coffee sloshing over the rim of my mug. My stomach knotted as I scanned the details. This wasn’t what I expected. Not international assassinations or government-sanctioned kills. Just common brutality. Calculated violence for profit. Professional cruelty.

I forced myself back to the screen and dug deeper.

A news article from a Philadelphia local paper read: “Suspected Crime Figure Eludes Charges Again.” My face stared back at me—younger, hair longer, eyes colder. The photograph captured me leaving a courthouse, a smirk dancing at the corner of my mouth .

I was never in the military. Never intelligence. Just a criminal.

The truth hit like a physical blow. Oblivion didn’t break a good man. They simply repurposed a monster.

My throat tightened as I accessed financial records through backdoor channels. Money laundering operations. Payments from small-time crime bosses. Funds moving through shell companies.

A methodical mind. A talent for exploitation. The same skills that made me lethal now were honed breaking people for money then.

Maeve sat by my side. I expected her to comment on my past—to say anything at all, but she didn’t.

Almost as if she could sense just how painful this realization was.

I wondered what she was thinking about now, but I didn’t dare look at her.

Was she disappointed in the man I was? Had her opinion about me changed? Would she still trust me?

I forced myself to chase those thoughts away. For now, I still had a mission to do. If I had been a bad man before Brock got his hands on me, it didn’t mean that other men—like her brother—were, too. They deserved as much of a chance as I got.

I found police interviews with witnesses who mysteriously recanted testimony. Surveillance photos of me entering buildings where people later turned up broken or dead. A psychological evaluation from an earlier arrest described “calculated violence” and “absence of remorse.”

My reflection in the laptop screen looked haunted—a ghost staring back from a past I didn’t remember but couldn’t escape. Was this who I was? Not a weapon perverted from its purpose, but a predator given better tools?

A wave of nausea hit me. I bolted to the sink, dry heaving over stainless steel. Nothing came up but bitter coffee and acid.

“Ronan.”

“I need a moment,” I told Maeve, glancing back at her over my shoulder.

Worry lingered on her face, and I didn’t miss the way her hand tremored still.

I hated that she had to see all of this—see me like this.

I hated that I couldn’t offer a better image of myself.

That I couldn’t have been a better man. “This is…a lot. I know you said...”

“I understand,” she interrupted me with a soft nod. I observed her eyes carefully over my shoulder, hands still resting against the sink. “I can’t even imagine what it’s like to learn so many things about yourself. All at once. And to have someone sit next to you as you do it.”

I appreciated her understanding, though a part of me feared the worst. “Are you going to leave?” I asked, plain and simple.

Maeve stared at me for a long moment. “I’ll just be in the bedroom to give you a moment to yourself.” As simple as that. After a few long steps, she was gone. I splashed water on my face and sighed. When I returned to the laptop, it was with the dread of a man approaching his own execution.

I clicked on a folder labeled “Personal Relations.” Whatever lay inside might be the final nail in the coffin of who I thought—hoped—I might have been.

It was sparse—tellingly so. No friendships. No lasting connections. Just strategic alliances with other criminals and fixers across multiple cities. Brock as my only steady collaborator. Names and dates, recorded with the precision of business transactions rather than relationships.

A subfolder labeled “Associations” revealed photographs of me with various individuals, mostly at bars or exclusive clubs. In each image, I maintained the same practiced smile that never reached my eyes. My arm draped possessively around whoever proved useful at the time.

Then I found her.

Sofia Byers. The name jolted through me like an electric current. The woman I had called for during my fever.

She was beautiful in a refined way—dark hair swept into an elegant updo, designer clothes, flawless makeup. Standing beside me at some high-end charity event, champagne flute in hand. My arm was around her waist, fingers digging slightly into the fabric of her dress.

Something about the image made me pause. Her smile seemed practiced, much like mine. But there was tension in her shoulders, a slight distance between our bodies despite my grip.

I opened another photograph—a wedding photo. Sofia in white, and I in a tailored suit. The perfect couple. Except for her eyes, somewhere between resignation and fear. And mine were empty.

A document caught my attention: “Asset Assessment: Sofia Byers-Graves. ”

My stomach turned as I read. The assessment was devoid of any language suggesting actual partnership or affection.

Our marriage was strategic, not emotional.

Her father owned legitimate businesses, perfect for laundering money.

He’d refused my business proposals. Sofia became my leverage.

I married her, used her, and threatened her father to make more money.

I scrolled through more photographs. Sofia and I at restaurants, on a stroll, or in a car. Each showing the same dynamic—me displaying her like a trophy, her expression increasingly hollow over time.

A medical report noted bruising on her wrists and torso. Another document detailed how I used her as social access to potential clients who wouldn’t deal with someone like me directly. I understood that I sold her to gain a contract.

I scanned the images desperately, searching for any hint of genuine feeling. Any flash of the connection I felt with Maeve. There was nothing—only calculation and control.

My fingers froze over a newspaper article: “Businessman’s Daughter Found Dead in Apparent Suicide.” Sofia’s face stared back at me, her official portrait beside the headline. The article mentioned her husband, Ronan Graves, was “unavailable for comment.”

The date was just three weeks after I entered Oblivion.

I slammed the laptop shut, unable to stomach any more. The room suddenly felt airless, walls closing in. I needed space. I needed to be anywhere but inside the skin of this monster I was.

I moved to the window, seeking air .

My reflection ghosted in the glass—the face of a monster who destroyed lives methodically, who treated people as tools, who married a woman and broke her until she couldn’t live anymore.

The calculation happened automatically, a tactical assessment I couldn’t shut off.

Physical harm would be the simplest way to destroy Maeve—quick, efficient, permanent.

But the true danger lay elsewhere. In how easily I could manipulate her compassion, exploit her loyalty, drag her into darkness until that light in her eyes dimmed.

Until she became hollow-eyed like Sofia.

Sofia.

The name landed like a blow. I had failed her. No—that implies good intentions. The truth was worse. I used her, broke her, and when she died, I wasn’t even there.

A cold certainty settled in my chest. Whatever was growing between Maeve and me must end.

I couldn’t allow her to become another Sofia—another casualty of my darkness.

I would complete the mission: find Xavier, eliminate Brock, dismantle Oblivion.

And then I would disappear from her life permanently.

The decision should have brought relief. Instead, it brought only hollowness, an emptiness more profound than anything conditioning ever created.