Page 13 of Sinful Desires (Sinful #4)

Chapter

Twelve

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too.They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”

― Stephen King

Théo

I hit the button for the fifteenth floor as Scarlett twitched beside me, biting her nails like she was strapped to a live wire. It was well past nine, but her father had decided at the last minute that he needed to see her to talk business.

I had to start with him if I wanted to figure out who Scarlett Harper really was.

Lucius Harper didn’t have skeletons—he had mass graves. Finding dirt on him felt like digging for gold in a minefield.

Still, I dug.

The scraps I’d pulled told me everything I needed to know: He was a master of manipulating his image. And let’s just say, his image wasn’t the only thing he’d crafted. I wondered if Scarlett knew what kind of man she was walking into a room with.

Twenty people burned alive, turned to ash in a matter of minutes. Just because Lucius Harper had wanted to kill a headline.

“Dead body found in Superstar Scarlett Harper’s hotel room.”

I had seen the pictures—the bodies laid out like dominoes, melted desks, someone’s heel still stuck to the carpet.

And it wasn’t the first time someone else’s blood had stained the floor because of a Harper.

His father, Harold, once cracked two of Lucius’ ribs and sent him into a coma when he was fourteen.

Yet the bastard had turned out just like him. Drunk at eighteen, billionaire by twenty, powerful enough to bury the mess by thirty.

The elevator doors groaned open, and Scarlett stepped out, her breath quick, too quick. I trailed behind her as she moved down the hall, but then she stopped short, glancing at me.

“Wait out here,” she said, her voice tight.

I leaned against the doorframe and peered through the crack after she knocked. The old man was sitting behind an ivory desk, glasses perched on his nose, reading a newspaper.

“I’ll be here if you need anything.”

She nodded, not meeting my eyes, and then walked in.

I didn’t want to admit that maybe I’d pegged her all wrong. And that fucking pissed me off.

For three years, I’d followed her. Always kept my distance, but never too far.

Close enough to watch, to make sure no one else touched her.

Had gotten her home more times than I could count when she ended up drunk, passed out in clubs, curled up in VIP booths at fashion shows, or half conscious in private suites at galas.

I kept my clients in New York for a reason—so I could always be close.

So I never missed a fucking thing.

I’d lasted a week after the night we met. A single week before her name had started rotting through my head like acid. Her voice kept me up.

I told myself I just needed to see her one more time, then I’d let it go. That was the lie I fed myself.

So, I’d taken a day off. Crashed the gala her family had hosted for orphans across the world. Slipped in wearing a security badge. No one had asked questions. No one ever did.

She sang three songs in a white dress, her red hair sleek and eyes glassy. She looked like a fucking angel.

A ruined one.

I should’ve turned around right then, but I couldn’t. I walked out the back door, choking on whatever the hell was clawing up my throat. That’s when I saw her lying on a bench outside, a cigarette still lit on the ground beside her, a red satin scarf tied around her neck.

I touched her cheek, which felt cold enough to burn. Her skin was freezing, but that wasn’t what stopped me. It was her face. The way her lashes rested against her cheeks. The soft part of her lips, open just enough for shallow, fragile breaths.

She didn’t look asleep. She didn’t even look alive. She looked empty. Hollow in a way that didn’t happen overnight. And that was what wrecked me.

Because I had seen that fucking look before.

Not on the streets. Not in hospital beds or the faces of people I was paid to protect or bury.

I had seen it staring back at me. In quiet rooms. In cracked mirrors. In every place where silence lingered too long.

That look. The look of someone who had already let go long before their body had caught up. And it called to something inside me that I had spent years trying to kill.

That was why I couldn’t fucking walk away. That was why I had carried her home, so carefully my hands shook from it. Because I knew exactly what she was.

A soul inches from death, the kind delivered by its own hands.

A ghost wearing a heartbeat.

And somewhere deep in the wreckage of me, I had already decided she fucking belonged to me, even if the world didn’t want her.

I hacked into her security system in under thirty seconds with my phone. Her passwords were a joke.

She never even knew I was there. Never even opened her eyes.

I laid her in bed, tucked her in, and stared at her long enough to memorize the sound of her breathing.

Then I slipped the scarf from around her neck, still warm, and tied it tightly around my wrist. Her star-shaped necklace already hung from my throat, an echo of a previous night, not unlike this one.

I rarely took it off. It stayed under my shirt, close to my skin. It only came off when I showered or was sweating too hard to ignore it.

I’d looked back once then walked out, fingers twitching.

But that had been the moment. The one that had fucked me forever .

After that, seeing her had become my new obsession. Every two days, like clockwork, I had to check on her. Had to know she was breathing. If she was traveling or on tour, I’d track her down. Pull up security footage, hack camera feeds, bribe hotel staff if I had to.

I made sure she was safe, even though I couldn’t fucking protect her from herself. She was a walking disaster. Pills, parties, press. One bad night away from ending up in a morgue.

But I saw it every damn time—in her eyes, in her voice, in the way she smiled.

Scarlett Harper was the kind of broken you don’t fix.

You bury it or you bleed from it.

But three weeks ago, something had hit me when I saw her kneel next to that girl in the blue beanie.

She was four, maybe five years old, hooked to an IV stand with eyes too tired for her age.

Scarlett had tucked a stuffed panda under her arm and whispered something that made the kid snort-laugh hard enough to make the machine beep.

That wasn’t charity. That was a girl who knew pain and wanted to steal someone else away from it, even if just for a second.

She hadn’t just given them a million-dollar check. She’d given them a break from dying.

So yeah, maybe the script I kept shoving down my throat about her, the one where she was selfish and spoiled and easy to hate, had never really worked.

I had spent years clinging to it, telling myself I could.

That it would be easier. Safer than this.

Safer than the truth. Safer than seeing her for what she really was?…

a girl begging to be loved, twisting herself into whatever shape the world demanded, killing off pieces of her soul just to be accepted.

Safer than admitting she had made me want to fucking live. Because she did. She made me stay. Kept me breathing. Kept me rotting here.

I had told the angel of death to wait a little longer, because my choice was already made.

I was done with this life, but I just needed one more day to see her red hair, her sleepy blue eyes, and those sad full lips.

But days had turned into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, and still my need to watch her never fucking faded.

And that truth gutted me.

Here I was, caring anyway. And I hated every fucking second of it.

Suddenly, a shattering thud cut through the silence. Something heavy hit the floor, like a body.

My gut clenched. I was moving before I knew it, the door cracking open with a sharp, splintering sound as it hit the wall behind it.

And then I saw her.

Scarlett was on the floor, one hand braced on the ground, the other covering her cheek. Her red hair hung down, hiding most of her face, but her body gave her away. She was trembling.

Lucius fucking Harper stood with his back to her, gazing out at the New York skyline like he hadn’t just laid a hand on his daughter. Like she wasn’t shattered on the floor behind him.

I moved without thinking, rage boiling up from the pit of my stomach, thick and blinding. But before I could reach him, she pushed herself up and dusted off her clothes with shaking hands.

“It’s fine,” she said. “He’s done now.”

And I heard it again. The same broken voice from three years ago, soaked and shaking in a fountain of marble and lies.

“I hate him so fucking much.”

I didn’t need to see the red blooming on her cheek or the faint swell rising beneath her skin. I knew. The fucker had hit her.

I moved one step closer, then another, until my knuckles ached from clenching. I was seconds away from losing everything.

My job. My control. My fucking mind.

I wanted to drag him across that marble floor and see if he still sounded so calm with a mouthful of blood.

Then I felt it. A hand. Small, trembling, clutching the front of my vest.

“Let’s go,” Scarlett murmured, barely above a whisper. “ Please .”

And just like that, all that rage—violent, hungry, ready to spill—turned in on itself and carved a hole through my chest. It was the first time she’d ever said that word to me.

Not asshole, like she used to spit when she was pissed.

Not soldier, the name she threw around when she wanted to rile me up.

But please .

And fuck me, I knew right then that I’d let that word ruin me.

Because please meant she didn’t want anyone else. It meant she looked for me when the world turned to shit. And now I’d never hear it again without wanting to destroy whatever made her say it.

I didn’t speak, just followed her out with murder pressed between my teeth.

“It’s December, Miss Harper.”

I stepped out after her, the rooftop biting at my skin, wind carving through my jacket. “You planning to freeze to death?”