Page 38

THIRTY-EIGHT

BANE

Swear you won’t go and confront your father about the money.

I repeat the promise to myself as I walk, hands flexing at my sides, jaw tight. The streetlights flicker as I pass, casting long shadows over the cracked pavement.

But it’s not my father’s door I’m knocking on tonight.

It’s only the promise I made to my wife on the way home from Vegas that keeps me from tracking that motherfucker down. My father still thinks he has any say over my life? That he’s got even a shred of control over me? The fucking bastard. But I won’t go after him because she asked me not to. And feeding his narcissistic supply with another fight would be letting him win. I opted out of his games a long time ago.

They say the best revenge is living well, right? Somehow, I’m doing just that. I’m living a life I never even let myself hope for. It’s intoxicating, like breathing in deep after drowning for years.

Moira is in my house. In my bed. In my shower. Bent over my kitchen counter. Wrapped around me at the club. Wherever I go, she’s there. Electric and unpredictable and completely fucking mine.

And while I can let it go with my father, sometimes, revenge is also about sending a message that won’t soon be forgotten.

I never go through Moira’s phone. That’s not who I am. That’s not what I do.

But the second she told me she didn’t even remember the name of the fucker who put his hands on her, I knew I had to fix my mistake.

So I looked over her shoulder when she was entering her password, and once she was in the shower, I scrolled. Through every damn dating app, every message thread, my blood getting hotter with each pathetic, simpering attempt from random pricks trying to get her attention. Until I found him.

Jeff .

Cocky in his messages. Too many winking emojis, the kind of guy who thinks he’s charming but is really just a walking, talking red flag. And most importantly, I found an address. It was the only message from anyone that day—the day she showed up with a black eye.

I reach his building. It’s a grimy, forgotten complex, and my blood hums in my veins. My life is better than I ever imagined it could be, but that doesn’t mean I let things slide.

Not this. Not him.

The apartment complex is cheap and rundown, and the elevator is out of order. Not that I’d necessarily want to trust my life to it anyway. I jog up three flights of stairs, then rap my knuckles against the peeling wood door, firm and insistently. After too long a pause, it creaks open.

A guy stands there, looking exactly like the kind of greasy asshole I imagined—barefoot in basketball shorts, a smirk half-formed on his unshaven face.

“Jeff?” I double-checked.

“What?” he drawls, looking me up and down, not knowing he’s about to have the worst night of his life.

My fists flex at my sides. I’ve spent months sinking into this new life, this new purpose, Moira’s warmth wrapping around me like something I never knew I needed. But beneath all that light, there’s a sharp, jagged edge. A reminder of what I let slip past and of what I need to correct.

I take a slow breath, steadying the rage boiling in my gut. She’s mine. She chose me. And I choose her, over and over again.

“Do you remember Moira?” I ask, low and even.

His brow furrows, confusion playing across his features. “Moira, who?”

Wrong answer.

I push forward, just enough that he has to take a step back. His smirk falters.

“The girl you messaged months ago. Don’t pretend you don’t remember. The one you met up with, and then she came home with a bruise on her face.”

His expression shutters, but I see the flicker of recognition in his beady little eyes.

“Look, man, she was just some whore. Who gives a shit?”

I don’t let him finish.

My fist connects with his gut, doubling him over. He wheezes and stumbles, but I don’t give him time to recover. I follow up with a brutal right hook, sending him sprawling to the dirty floorboards. His head bounces off the ground.

Before he can suck in another breath, I drive my fist into his ribs. Again and again until he lets out a strangled, gasping wheeze.

I’ll be damned if I let anyone think they can lay hands on my wife and walk away unscathed.

He groans, rolling onto his side and spitting blood on the floor.

“Fuck,” he gasps. “What the fuck, man?”

I crouch beside him, grab a fistful of his shirt, and haul him up just enough so he can see me clearly.

“If you ever lay hands on a woman again, I’ll come back. Because I’ll be watching. And next time, you won’t be walking away.”

To make sure he’s got the message, I slammed my fist into his face one more time.

I let him drop, watching as he curls in on himself, blood spattered down the front of his shirt.

“Say her name,” I order.

He whimpers, but I grab his jaw and force him to look at me. “Say it.”

“Moira,” he chokes out.

Only then do I let go. I stand, roll my shoulders, and step over his sorry, bloodied form to walk out the door.

And don’t look back.

The months pass, and I only become more obsessed with my wife

Wherever I go, she’s there, electric and unpredictable and completely fucking mine. At the club, sometimes we let others into our play—Gemini and Jinx, a genderqueer dom/sub pair Moira trusts. But only if I’m leading. Because even when others are involved, she is always, always mine first.

She doesn’t even realize how much it means to me that she chose me. There’s only been one other person in my life who ever chose me over money—my mother. And no, Moira isn’t some replacement for the woman I never got to know.

But it still means something deep. To know that she put me above wealth. For fuck’s sake, she even kept my father trying to buy her off a secret because she thought it would be better for me. She didn’t want to come between me and my father because, in her mind, at least I had a dad. She figured maybe, just maybe, he was looking out for me.

She’s wrong, of course. But the fact that her heart was in the right place? That she was thinking of me first? I’ve lived long enough to know how rare a person like her is.

And I’ll spend the rest of my life proving to her that she made the right choice.

Because for the first time, I’m not alone.

I didn’t even realize how fucking isolated I’d been until suddenly, she was there. Bright and wild and buzzing with energy every morning when I wake up and every night before I fall asleep. She fills every space she enters and lights up every room.

But I see what no one else does.

Sometimes, that light flickers.

She has her down days. She can be reactive, her moods shifting like a storm breaking without warning. She told me once it feels like a balloon popping; one second, she’s floating, untethered, and the next, she’s crashing hard over something as inconsequential as a commercial.

I haven’t brought it up to her yet. She’s sensitive about labels and about having been institutionalized before for her so-called sex addiction.

But it’s obvious—she’s somewhere on the bipolar spectrum. No one ever looked past her manic behaviors, past the reckless sex and the constant motion, to see what was really going on. They just saw the symptoms, not the cause.

It pisses me off. Especially when it comes to her brother.

Domhnall should have seen it. He should have realized. Instead, he just wrote her off. Treated her like a problem instead of a person. I hear the way she talks about him, the way she pretends not to care. But I know better. She does care. She loves him, despite everything.

And he doesn’t deserve it.

I do.

So I’ll keep watching. Keep learning her in all the ways no one else ever bothered to. Every new thing I learn only makes me more obsessed. More devoted. More determined to be the man she deserves. To protect her.

She chose me.

And I’ll keep choosing her every damn day.