Page 117 of Only for Him

Has she? Or have you just lost control over yourself?

“I brought you something,” I say, pulling out the small velvet pouch and laying it between us on the table.

Her gaze lifts, wary. There’s that familiar flash of suspicion in her eyes, the kind I’ve earned and deserve. She doesn’t trust gifts. Good.

Her resistance is the last thing keeping me tethered to reality. If she ever trusted me fully, turned to me as easily as a sunflower to the sky, I might do stupid,stupidthings.

“Go on,” I say, soft but commanding.

She pulls the strings apart, the sound of the fabric brushing against itself loud in the silence. When the earrings tumble into her palm, she freezes.

Her breath hitches. Her fingers curl protectively around them. The metal catches the light.

“You keep giving these back to me,” she breathes. Her voice is paper-thin, and the look on her face… Christ. I canseehow badly she wants to wear them. I can see the torn place on her earlobe where they used to hang. “Why?”

Because I know what it’s like to grab at razor wire when the pain is better than a freefall.

A long beat stretches between us.

“Because I think they have something to do with the vengeance you seek.”

She hesitates. When she speaks, I feel it not just in the air between us, but in my ribs and spine.

“Yes. They do.”

“Who is it you want vengeance for?”

“For my sister.” She blinks, closes a fist around the earrings. “Serena.”

The name pierces through the haze of tension, wrapping around my mind like a noose.

Giselle’s chin lifts as she pushes through her grief.

“She went missing. It was my fault, I ratted her out for seeing a boy she wasn’t supposed to.” Her voice quivers. “My parents never recovered. We fell apart. When I joined the NYPD, I learned... more. About what happened to her.”

I can guess at what she means.

I’ve seen enough girls like Serena. Seen the rooms they vanish into. Seen the numbers they get assigned instead of names before they get that name back on the auction block. Fifteen years of it. Fifteen years of the worst humanity has to offer.

The slideshow plays behind my eyes: lot numbers, auction blocks, bruises that don’t fade.

But I wait for her to tell me, because I want to hear how she says it. I need to know what it’s done to her, so I know how much blood to spill on her behalf.

“She was trafficked,” Giselle says. “Then murdered.”

Rage licks at my ribcage. I’m always angry, but this is bordering on sacrilege.

This is all. Fucking. Mine.

Watching my little viper replay the horror of it makes me want to snort the ashes of every man who put her on this path. I’d gouge out eyes for less. Break noses for an errant glance.

These people? The ones who carved grief into her marrow?

Death is mercy they don’t deserve.

“I didn’t…” she starts, and my stomach knots. Her voice shakes but she keeps going. “I didn’t see all the connections until you.You starting giving me those bodies, all connected. This huge web… I don’t know. Ididn’tknow. I still don’t. Not the details, not anything concrete. But I know she was… she must have been…”

“Like Dakota,” I say. My voice is ice. It’s the only thing keeping me from shaking.