"Hi." I say to Celeste as she walks past my car. She ignores me and I say it again. "Hi," I say again and she passes by without a word. I stare at her in shock. I've been nothing but nice to this girl but she's always been mean.
I follow her into to the store wondering what it would take for her to just say hello to me. I have been waiting for her to give me the light of day for a year now.
I reach out and touch her arm softly. She just and then screams making me stop in my tracks.
"What the hell?" She says swatting my hand away, she looks up at me with a snarl on her face and it makes me smile. "And what the fuck are you smiling at?" She says taking her headphones off.
"I didn't know you had such a potty mouth," I say amused and she scawls at me.
"Wha do you want?" She says annoyed.
"I wanted to say hi to you," I say and she rolls her eyes at me. I smile surprised by her reaction. "And introduce myself," I say and she looks me up and down like she wants to size me up.
"I know who you are." She says walking away. I grab her arm gently stopping her.
"But I don't know you," I say lying to her. I know her full name and yes including her middle name. I know where she lives. I even know what classes she takes in school.
I have known about her for a very long time. She tries to hide herself from the world but I see her. I see the body she hides under all of the baggy layers she carries with her. She's smoking hot but she doesn't know it. And I love that about her.
I'm not embarrassed to say that I'm a little obsessed with her.
I've been keeping my distance from her because I was waiting.
I needed to give her time to mature, I first noticed two years ago. Normally I would have gone for her then but she was too young and she's special to me. I wasn't going to expose her to my madness at sixteen.
Now that she's older I have nothing holding me back.
I want her and I want and I'm going to do everything in my power to get her.
"So, I'm Ray and you are?" I ask her holding out my hand to shake her hand. She looks back at it and then she turns and walks away. "Nice to meet you too," I say and she flat-out ignores me.
She might ignore me today but she's not going to going to be able to ignore me anymore.
This is the beginning of a great thing.
I watch her walk away with a smile on my face. She thinks she hates me now but she's going to beg me to be her boyfriend when I'm done with her.
The sound of gunfire explodes through the night, deafening and relentless. A machine gun—no, multiple—rips through the air outside, drowning everything else out. I hear men shouting, screaming, and then the screaming turns into something else. Agony. Terror.I clamp my hands over my ears, pressing myself further into the corner of the closet, trying to disappear. My body shakes violently, my breath coming in shallow gasps as I rock back and forth. I squeeze my eyes shut and whisper a prayer under my breath, over and over."Please, God. Please, God. Please, God."The walls tremble with the force of the fight happening outside. Glass shatters somewhere. Heavy footsteps storm through the house. More gunshots. More yelling. I don’t kn
I wake up with a start, my heart thundering in my chest. My breath comes in ragged gasps, and for a moment, I can’t place where I am. I sit up quickly, expecting to see someone in the room with me—someone coming to hurt me, to take me again—but when my eyes adjust to the dim light, the room is empty.Just the silence.I look around, the weight of everything pressing down on me. This place—the house where Trevor has kept me locked up for weeks—has become a prison. It’s always quiet, too quiet. The only sounds are the distant hum of the outside world that I can’t reach, the creaks of the house settling, and my own restless thoughts.The darkness beyond the window is thick and consuming, the kind of darkness that swallows up the last remnants of hope. But tonight, something is different. Something feels off.I strain my ears, listening closely. There’s a faint sound, like the whisper of something moving through
The air is cold, but I barely feel it. My fingers flex at my sides, itching for the moment I get to wrap them around Trevor’s throat.A few meters away, the house stands in the darkness, barely lit by the moon. Celeste is in there. I can feel it, like some invisible tether between us. She’s so close I can almost smell her—vanilla and something soft, something warm.Nathan steps up beside me. I don’t have to look at him to know what he’s thinking. We’ve run through this plan a hundred times. We both breathe slowly, measured, in sync. If we let the rage take over now, we’ll lose. We need to do this right.Behind us, the rest of my men are waiting, silent shadows in the night. Five hundred of them. A small army, but that’s what it takes when yo
Nathan and I are staring at the screen, watching the dot move. Every second it inches closer to its destination, my pulse beats harder, my hands clench tighter. I should be in my car already, speeding toward her. I should be ending this.But I can’t rush this.One mistake, and Celeste might never make it out alive.I take a slow breath, forcing myself to think. Trevor’s still pissed about today—I saw it in his eyes, the way his mask slipped for just a second. He’s getting sloppy. That’s why Tamrin was able to slip one on him, why he hasn’t even realized she did. He thinks he still has control, but we’re the ones pulling the strings now."One more day," I say, more to myself than to Nathan.
My hands are trembling so hard I can barely hold the phone. My chest feels tight, like there isn’t enough air in the room, but I force myself to breathe. In and out. In and out. I can’t fall apart now. Not when I finally made a move.Sadie sits next to me, watching silently. She hasn’t asked a single question since I took her phone, but she doesn’t have to. I know she’s thinking them. I know she wants to yell at me, shake me, demand answers. But she doesn’t. Maybe she knows I don’t have the strength to explain right now.Nathan answers on the second ring. His voice is sharp, alert. “Who’s this?”“It’s Tamrin.” My voice barely comes out, but I swallow the lump in my throat and force myself to continue. “I hid my phone in Trevor’s car so you can track him. I’ll send you the details now.”Silence. Then a sharp breath on the other end. “You—” he starts, but I don’t give him a chance to question me. I end the call and immediately go to the tracking app on my phone, sending the location str
The drive back feels like it lasts forever, and every minute of it makes my stomach churn with dread. Trevor’s words hang in the air, thick and suffocating. He doesn’t stop talking, doesn’t stop reminding me of everything he’s capable of, and how easily he could ruin my life if I even think about crossing him. Every threat is sharp, like a blade cutting through my chest. He tells me he will kill me, kill my family, that no one would ever know what happened to Celeste or that I was involved.The fear grips me harder with each passing second. It feels like I’m suffocating in this car, trapped in this nightmare I can’t escape. I can’t say anything. I just nod, keep my eyes on the road, my breath shallow, praying he’ll just let me go. But it never comes. The torment doesn’t stop.Finally, when the car pulls up in front of my house, I feel my body go stiff. Trevor grabs my thigh, his fingers digging in deep, hard enough to bruise. The pain flares up immediately, sharp and relentless, and I