Page 63 of The Wrong Man

When did this happen? When did I become this person, this desperate, grasping thing that can’t bear the thought of loss?

I’ve spent my whole life alone. I’ve been fine with it. More than fine. Solitude was safety. Isolation was protection. The walls I built around myself kept out pain as effectively as they kept out connection.

Dylan is dismantling those walls, and I don’t know how to stop him. Don’t know if I want to stop him. Don’t know anything anymore except that watching him sleep feels more important than breathing.

He shifts again, rolling onto his back. The movement exposes his throat, pale and vulnerable in the moonlight. My eyes trace the line of it, the flutter of his pulse beneath thin skin. So fragile. So easily damaged. So completely at my mercy.

The thought should make me feel powerful. Instead it just makes me feel afraid.

I’m afraid of myself. Of what I might do to keep him. Of what I might become.

I’ve done terrible things in my life. Hurt people in ways that would give most humans nightmares. I’ve never lost sleep over any of it. Never questioned, never doubted, never felt anything but cold professional satisfaction in a job well done.

But standing here watching Dylan sleep, I find myself afraid of my own capacity for darkness. Because I know, with absolute certainty, that I would do terrible things for him. Would burn worlds and end lives and sacrifice whatever scraps of humanity I have left if it meant keeping him safe. Keeping him here. Keeping him mine.

The intensity of it should terrify me. Perhaps it does, somewhere underneath the strange calm that has settled over my mind. But mostly I just feel... resolved. Like something has clicked into place. Like I’ve finally admitted a truth I’ve been dancing around for days.

Dylan O’Shea is mine now. Not because I captured him, not because I’m holding him prisoner, not because circumstances have bound us together. He’s mine because I’ve decided he is. Because something inside me has claimed him in a way that transcends logic or reason or morality.

I don’t know what that means. Don’t know what it makes me. Don’t know how to reconcile this fierce, possessive thing with the careful distance I’ve maintained my whole life.

All I know is that I can’t let him go.

I stand there for a long time, watching him sleep, wrestling with thoughts I don’t know how to process. The moonlight shifts as the night deepens, changing the patterns of silver and shadow across the bed. Dylan’s breathing stays steady, deep and even and trusting.

Eventually, when my legs start to ache and the first hints of gray appear at the edges of the shutters, I force myself to move. To step back. To leave the room and close the door softly behind me.

I return to the horrible sofa and lie down again, though I know sleep won’t come. My mind is too full, spinning with realizations I’m not ready to examine in the harsh light of day.

Tomorrow I’ll go back to being practical. I’ll make him breakfast and check on his recovery and pretend that everything is normal. Pretend that I’m keeping him out of necessity rather than desire. Pretend that this is about guilt and responsibility and not about the terrifying thing growing in my chest.

But tonight, in the dark, I can admit the truth.

I’m not keeping Dylan because I have to.

I’m keeping him because he’s mine.

And I will destroy anyone who tries to take him from me.

Chapter nineteen

Dylan

The flat is quiet.

Too quiet. The kind of quiet that makes you aware of every creak and groan of the concrete building, every distant rumble of traffic. The kind of quiet that leaves far too much room for thinking.

I’m sitting on the horrible orange sofa, staring at the metal shutters that cover the windows. They’re solid. Industrial. The kind of shutters you’d see on a warehouse or a shop in a rough neighborhood. Not the kind of thing that should be a part of someone’s home.

Unless that someone has something to hide. Or someone.

Or you’re a torturer for a powerful mafia family and your so-called home is a miserable flat disguised as an industrial unit.

I sigh heavily as my fingers trace the worn velvet of the cushion beneath me. I need to stop moping and start acting.

I should be cataloging details. Noting patterns. Looking for weaknesses in my prison that I might be able to exploit.

It’s part of the plan. The grand scheme. Operation Manipulate The Murderer And Escape With My Life Intact.