CHRISTIAN
“Hello, Julian.”
I examined Stella’s stalker, who was strung up with heavy cuffs locking his arms and legs into a vertical spread-eagle position. Nails pinned his palms to the wall behind them, while black and blue bruises mottled his body like an obscene piece of abstract art.
We were in the warehouse I’d bought for this specific purpose. Remote, soundproofed, and guarded enough that an ant couldn’t crawl across the floor without me knowing.
Not all of my guys were okay with dirty work, which was fine.
I only needed a few who were, and they’d done their job prepping the bastard for me. I couldn’t have him waiting too comfortably while I tended to Stella.
My gaze flicked to the floor.
A small pool of blood stained the smooth gray concrete.
That was also fine.
It would grow soon enough.
Julian’s face was so beaten up it was unrecognizable, but the heat of his glare made me smile.
He had a bit of fight left in him. Good.
That would make our session so much more fun.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but you might have trouble writing any more notes in the future.” I snapped on a pair of gloves, my voice casual as I examined the array of tools available to me on a nearby table.
A different dozen blades. Brass knuckles. Screwdrivers, whips, nails, hooks…
Hmm. Choices, choices.
“Fuck you,” Julian spat.
My men had been relatively soft with him. It must’ve given him a false sense of security that what he’d gone through was as bad as it got.
I smiled. If you only knew.
“Language, Mr. Kensler. Honestly. Did your grandmother not teach you manners?” I selected one of the blades. I had a soft spot for knives.
They were lethal, precise, versatile. Everything I liked in a weapon.
“Here’s the thing.” I pressed the tip of the knife into his sternum. “I don’t like getting my hands dirty. Blood doesn’t go well with any of my clothes. But sometimes…” I dragged the knife down his torso. Blood welled and snaked down his body like thin rivulets of red. “Someone pisses me off enough that I make an exception.”
I paused at the soft flesh of his belly, then rammed the blade in so hard he would’ve collapsed had he not been strung up.
An inhuman scream ripped from his throat, followed by a second scream when I yanked the knife out.
“Here’s the thing, Julian.” I continued like nothing happened. “She’ll never be yours. She was always mine. And your biggest mistake…” I dropped the bloodied knife on the table and selected a meat cleaver. “Was hurting someone who was mine.”
I didn’t say Stella’s name. It didn’t deserve to live in a place where pain and death reigned, but we both knew who I was talking about.
Blood stains. Bruised skin. Terrified eyes.
My pulse pounded at the memory.
I usually stayed in control during these sessions. Cool, calm, even conversational as I worked on the subject.
But whenever I pictured the haunted look in her eyes, or the purple and black marring her gorgeous skin, something dark and icy rooted in my lungs.
Rage, and the primal need to tear anyone who even thought about hurting her apart from limb to limb.
If I’d been one minute late, she would’ve died. Her light snuffed out, just like that.
The rage coiled tight and exploded through the sharp blade of the cleaver, which smashed through flesh and bone until an animalistic howl of agony split the air.
“See?” My chest heaved from the force of my swing as Julian’s right hand hit the floor with a thud. “Hard to write again. Or type.”
That was all it took for his fight to melt like ice cream on hot concrete, which was disappointing.
Breaking them down was so much more satisfying when they didn’t bend so quickly.
“Please,” Julian gasped. Tears ran down his cheeks and dripped down his chin. “I’m sorry. I…”
“What would you have done had I not showed up? Raped her? Killed her?”
“No,” he blubbered. He trembled as I swapped blades again. “I…I didn’t want to hurt her. I…”
It was too late.
An image of Stella pinned beneath him, crying and bloodied, flashed through my head.
I punctured his chest and ignored his cries.
The mere fact that he’d put his hands on her and caused her even a second of pain…
When I was in the cabin, and I thought I was about to die…
Thought I was about to die…
About to die…
My vision tunneled.
A snarl broke free as I peeled off a square of her stalker’s flesh with a vicious tear.
Another howl rattled the bare bulb illuminating the space.
I didn’t indulge in these warehouse sessions often. The people who crossed me had to have committed sins great enough to warrant such treatment, and like I’d said, I didn’t like getting blood on my clothes.
But hurting Stella? There was no crime greater than that in my book.
The sounds of Julian’s screams and pleas drowned beneath the tidal wave of my anger. My world shrank to one that consisted solely of metal, blood, and agony. The snap of bone, the wet sound of tearing flesh, the barest elements of a man spilling from the seams of his gutted torso like stuffing from an old doll.
I could’ve spent the entire day working on Julian. Twenty-four hours was nothing compared to the months of hell he’d put Stella through.
Perhaps I would’ve, had I not returned to the table to swap my dull, overworked knife for a fresh one and saw the message waiting for me.
I’d left my phone next to the blades. The text onscreen was comically out of place, a jarring reminder that life existed outside these walls.
Stella: Come home to me.
My breathing slowed.
I was drenched with sweat and splattered with blood. My usual restraint had snapped beneath the weight of Stella’s hurt, but her words tethered me back to earth.
An image of Stella looking at me with those soft, knowing green eyes that morning replaced the warehouse.
Don’t give him any pieces of your soul.
I’d thought I didn’t have any left, but I was wrong. There was one remaining piece, and it belonged to her.
Crimson gradually retreated from my vision.
I dropped the knife and stared at the broken down, barely conscious man hanging on the wall.
The urge to make him suffer longer was still there, coiled like a vicious snake in my gut.
But the desire to return to Stella was stronger.
Come home to me.
“You got lucky,” I said.
I picked up my gun.
Three strategically placed shots later, Stella’s stalker was nothing more than a lifeless, bloodied heap of flesh.
For her, I’d given him the greatest mercy I was capable of giving: a quicker death.
I left the basement while Steele and Mason swooped in to clean up the mess.
The torture didn’t faze them; they were even more comfortable with the warehouse sessions than I was.
Unlike Kage, they also had no ambition other than to excel in the roles they already held. It was why I’d selected them to oversee Julian’s detainment.
Still, I would have to overhaul the company processes after I returned to the office. Change access codes, restructure teams. I didn’t want to risk another Kage situation.
But until then…
I entered the warehouse’s bathroom, washed off the blood, changed my clothes, and went home to Stella.
STELLA
“You’re home.”
My heart tripped when the door opened and Christian entered.
At first glance, he looked the same as when he’d left—black shirt, black pants, hauntingly beautiful face—but a closer look revealed the quiet storm brewing in his eyes.
“You asked me to come home.” He watched, body still but gaze burning like an open flame, as I closed the distance between us. “So here I am.”
His rough velvet voice held a note of caution.
It’d been five hours since he left, and we both knew he hadn’t been at the office.
“Is…” I trailed off, not wanting to say Julian’s name.
“You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”
“Right.” I swallowed the hundred questions crowding my throat and went with a safer route. “I read the letters.”
All twenty of them. Each one wrung my heart like a knot pulled taut, because I knew how hard it was for Christian to share anything about his personal life.
Those letters weren’t just letters—they were pieces of him, poured from his soul and inked in black.
And I loved every piece, no matter how flawed or broken he thought it was.
The storm in Christian’s eyes threatened to suck me into its vortex.
“I meant what I wrote,” he said quietly. “Every word.”
“I know.” I pressed my lips to his jaw. He went still, his muscles taut and his breaths quickening as I kissed my way up his jaw to the corner of his mouth.
“Welcome home,” I whispered.
A small shudder went through him before he turned his head and our mouths met. Static filled me as he cupped my face with one hand and curled his other hand around the back of my neck.
Last night’s kiss had been soft, gentle. An easing into the waters after our separation and a comfort after a hellish day.
This one was passion and desperation, a thorough reclaiming of what we were and the birth of what we could be.
No lies, no secrets, just us.
I sank into the familiar glide of Christian’s tongue against mine and the warmth of his hand against the back of my neck.
I didn’t ask questions about what he did in the five hours he was gone.
The world wasn’t black and white, no matter how much I wished it were.
And sometimes, we found our happiness in the shades of gray.
