I want you. So f**king much. I shot the message as hard as I could, hoping she’d decipher my soundless sentence.

She sucked in a breath, drawing my eyes to her br**sts encased in her pink tank top. Her ni**les hardened beneath the fabric, and it took all my willpower to stay sitting and not launch myself across the desk and grab her.

Clara ceased to exist as I stared at Zel. Her eyes went heavy with lust.

She made me f**king crazy.

I could no longer operate my body, and all concentration flew out of the window. All thoughts turned to binding her with silver jewellery and f**king her. I couldn’t get enough of her. I missed her.

Then another thought hit me.

Maybe I’ve done it the wrong way. Maybe the only way to succeed at never hurting her would be to trap myself in bondage. Am I always destined to be an animal only fit for shackles?

Life decided to answer my dumbass question in the form of tiny, breakable hand landing softly on my scarred cheek. Clara chose that exact moment—the moment I wasn’t concentrating—to touch me in the worst possible spot.

Life ceased to exist.

Death roared in my brain.

Hands clenched. Body shifted. Zel screamed.

Oh, shit. Oh, shit.

Conditioning tsunamied through me, wreaking havoc on my self-control, reminding me I’d been forged as a weapon, not a human to interact with something as killable as a child.

I blinked, bringing a terrified Clara into focus and a tear-stained ferocious Zel. “No!” she screamed.

My hands clutched Clara’s shoulders, digging into her, and it took every single reserve left inside to shove her away. The second she tumbled to the floor, Zel scooped her up and darted backward.

I fell off my chair and clutched my skull, trying to crush the overpowering orders.

Kill. Sever. Bleed. Devour.

I looked up, searching for the letter opener I kept on the desk. I needed a weapon to put myself down—before I did something I would never be able to live with.

“Clara, no!” Zel cried, sounding muffled in the crash of orders in my head. “Stay away.”

Amazingly, Clara brought on the conditioning, and she was the one who ended it. Her loud, little voice yelled, “Stop it!”

And…it did.

Just like that. Instant silence, leaving me shaking and eerily empty.

I snapped my head upright, breathing hard. I climbed to my feet, creaking in joints that had no right to move after a lifetime of torture. “Are you okay?” My voice was gruff, strained. Gulping in air, I ran hands through my shaggy hair.

The spell of lust between Zel and me was gone, replaced with appalled horror in her gaze. My heart deflated. Why can’t I be f**king normal?!

I wanted to tear my office apart and fight. I ruined it. Proved to Zel Clara wasn’t safe around me. Fuck!

“Hazel, you know I—” What could I say? I’d made more progress in the last two days than ever before, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be f**king enough to deserve them.

Clara squirmed in her mother’s hold. Zel seemed to be in livid shock, her face frozen in stone.

Freeing herself, Clara came forward. Not close enough to touch, but close enough for me to witness the fierceness in her dark eyes. “I’m sorry. I forgot. I didn’t mean to touch you.” Her head hung, sending a curtain of shiny hair around her face. “Don’t yell at me, okay?”

My heart lurched. I felt like f**king crying. None of this was fair. Not to Clara, or Zel, or even me. I was and always would be a machine who should remember his place and stay in the dark.

Clara was so innocent. So pure. Everything that I wasn’t.

“I won’t yell at you, little one. It wasn’t your fault.” Sighing heavily, I stayed slouched on the floor, keeping a careful eye on her. “I think you and your mother should go.”

Zel sucked in a harsh breath, life animating her body once again. I searched her gaze and f**king died when she nodded once. “Yes, Clara. I think Mr. Fox needs to have some time on his own. Let’s go to the beach with Auntie Clue and Ben.”

“But I don’t want to go to the beach with them. And stop calling him Fox!” Clara’s cheeks grew pink. “It was my fault. Don’t kick us out, please. You haven’t told me any stories. You haven’t shown me a sheep. I don’t want to go.”

I couldn’t stand seeing her bottom lip wobble.

Right there. Right then. My life split, heading into a crossroads.

I was obsessed with finding redemption. Destroyed by love. Possessed by hope. Consumed by a past I couldn’t shake. My eyes locked with Zel’s. It was time. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t come with baggage, or issues that I might never be free of, but before Zel walked away from me forever, I wanted her to know the truth.

I wanted to know her. I wanted to earn her trust. I wanted a connection. I didn’t want to be feared or hated. I didn’t want to be an inconvenience or burden.

It was time to tell her everything, so she could decide for herself.

It was the only way forward. And it would mean I’d lose both of them because she would never allow her daughter near me again.

“I think it’s time I told you a story, Clara.” My voice sounded heavy and bleak. I’ll tell you things that’ll scar your mind and grant you nightmares for life.

Zel sniffed, straightening her back. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She moved forward, wrapping her arms around Clara’s shoulders. Her body trembled with tightly reined emotion; her limbs brittle, eyes tinged with grief. “Please, Fox. You keep forgetting she’s a child. You can’t tell her what I think you want to. You can’t unburden yourself onto such an innocent mind. I won’t let you.”

“I’ll filter. I’ll turn it into a fairy-tale. I promise I won’t share too much, just…please…give me the opportunity to tell someone. Before you leave.”

She bit her lip, deliberations filling her eyes.

I looked at my hands. Holding them up, I said, “I can tell you the story behind every scar, every nick, and every mark on my body. I’ll answer any question you want, and then you can cast judgement.” My fingers weren’t appendages—they were ruthless weapons and held a lifetime of grief. “I’ll save the details for you, but give me the chance to tell your daughter one story.”

Looking at Clara, I added, “I’ll tell you about a boy who lost his life only to have a little girl give it back to him.”

Clara smiled heartbreakingly sweet, her dark eyes so wide and forgiving. Her fierceness made me yearn for another child…a boy, who’d been just as tough and perfect.

“I’d like that. But I want more than one.”

Zel gave in. Her shoulders slumped. “One story and then we’re going home.”

I nodded. I could live with that. I couldn’t expect anything more.

Clara smiled, happiness glowing on her face. “Tell me now.”

Chapter 15

The day I told the father of my child about Clara, I walked away bleeding and scarred.

Instead of the swarmy, smooth ways that made me spread my legs for him, he glared as if I were scum.

He called me a whore, a slut, a gold-digging bitch.

I didn’t know he had rich parents, or that he stood to inherit a substantial empire. We’d met on the streets, hanging around fast food chains. I thought he was an orphan—like me. Turned out he liked to dabble in darkness before going home to his perfect bed. It wasn’t until I stalked him to his house that I found out the truth.

His parents heard us screaming; his dad shoved me out the front door and straight into a large flower pot. The rose bush sliced the delicate skin below my eye with its angry thorns.

Blood dripped, smearing my one and only t-shirt, and I knew I never wanted anything to do with them.

The baby was mine.

Ever since that day, Clara was mine completely. I wasn’t good at sharing, but Roan Fox gave me no choice.

He fell in love with my child with a freaky single-minded determination that scared me more than his underlying temper and violence.

He looked at Clara as if she held the answer to all his problems.

But he didn’t know.

He didn’t know that one day soon she’d be gone.

The day that happened, his life would be over, and my heart would break, and I would give him back his blue pill.

The day Clara died, she would take both of us.

It was inevitable.

A story.

There were good stories, bad stories, tragedies, and happily ever afters. Whatever Fox wanted to tell Clara, I doubted it would be fluffy unicorns and sunshine.

I wanted to end this—all of it. I couldn’t stand my heart breaking every damn day. I couldn’t stand lying in bed thinking about Fox and fighting a never-ending war of hating him for making me feel, and despising him for keeping me hostage.

I’d been prepared to walk. I couldn’t sacrifice myself for a man who suffered more demons than the devil himself. I’d been through too much to let him hurt me again.

But then he saw Clara.

He fell in love with Clara.

He stole Clara, and she was no longer mine.

The slow burn of rage hadn’t left since he fell so obsessively in love with her. I wanted to sneak out the moment he’d gone to bed and leave—but when I took Clara’s hand and dragged her down the driveway, it was as if an invisible chain tethered me. Pulling me back, making me stay.

It wasn’t obligation or about the money anymore. By falling for Clara, he’d proven he had a heart. He proved he was a man—deep inside, and as much as I wanted to hate him, I couldn’t.

Not when he doted upon my own flesh and blood; cooked her food, cut the crusts off her sandwiches, and jumped to her every demand. He became human in my eyes and that made me want to hate him more.

But hate was an emotion that demanded limitless energy. I lost the will to stoke my rage and fan my flames of anger. After all, didn’t everyone deserve happiness?

Even men who’d killed. If they repented and acknowledged their sins, wasn’t it my job as a human being to help him on the road to recovery?

At the cost of Clara?

No, at the cost of him. It would be Fox who would suffer—not Clara. She was too bold, too well loved and strong, too educated about the world to have long-term effects from Fox. But him? He wouldn’t survive her.

And that turned my hate into a sadness, more heavy and all-consuming than ever before. By letting them grow close, I was destroying both of them.

I didn’t seem to exist to either Fox or Clara as he picked himself off the floor and stalked toward the exit. He didn’t come back to collect me, or offer his hand to Clara. His body was locked down and untouchable.

“Hey, wait for me.” Clara shot out of my arms and trotted after him like a perfect puppy. I, on the other hand, trailed after them like a zombie whose world had just collapsed.

Fox led us down the corridor where the high-noon sun beamed through the glass ceiling. The heat warmed my shoulders and top of my head as we climbed down a flight of stairs to the main foyer. We headed along another hallway toward the back of the property before heading deeper downstairs, trading sunlight for shadows.

All the stupid hope I’d had that Fox might’ve broken through his no touching issues had been dashed into dust thanks to what happened in his office. He was still the same. Still haunted. Still ruined.

I thought my heart would never find a natural equilibrium again.

My skin pricked with goosebumps, and I breathed shallowly. I hadn’t been in this part of the house, and my limbs throbbed with adrenaline. I kept an ever watchful eye on Clara, poised to grab her just in case anything went wrong.

I want a weapon.

The thought popped into my head as Fox stopped outside a massive medieval door with a large lock. Engraved in the wood, looking as if someone took a sharp blade and carved with no finesse, were three lines. III.

It didn’t look like it belonged in this century. Just like the house constructed around it, there was something sinister and evil—something inhabitable.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up as Fox inserted a key and pushed open the door. The only door without a keypad lock.

He looked back, his grey-white eyes delving into mine. You can leave if you want. His gaze screamed the message glowing with pain.

I wanted to take him up on the offer. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t think I would ever be ready for what he wanted to show me.

I couldn’t give him a reply—either silent or verbal. My thoughts waged with each other, terrified at knowing, horrified at what he had to say. But mostly petrified of the decision I would have to make.

Clara darted inside—no fear or residual surprise with what happened in his office. A brief exclamation of amazement escaped her, followed by a delighted giggle. “It’s like a cave. No, it’s like a prison cell.” She turned to me. “Remember? Those pictures you showed me of those poor people in Tower of London for stealing the crown and all the Queen’s money? Remember, mummy, with the things dangling from the walls and the horrible items they used to make the poor men tell the truth? It looks like that.”

My heart stopped beating as I moved forward, taking in the room. Clara was entirely right. The space looked like a dungeon—fit only for murderous thieves and men who waited for the gallows.

Fox snorted before moving forward to flick on a row of lights hanging above work tables, tool benches, and paraphernalia. The light helped dispel some of the original cell appeal, but the walls were damp, the floor unfinished and compacted with earth.

The sharp metallic scent of bronze and lifeless metals hit my nose. Mixing with old sooty smoke from the large fire, and the cold dirt around us, the scent reminded me of Fox.