Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Possession I understand. Obsession I can justify. Even the stalking, and surveillance, and orchestrated manipulation—I can rationalize all of it through the lens of dominance and submission. Of giving her what she wrote about wanting, of being exactly the monster she needed.
But this?
This sitting in parking lots and tracking her movements and feeling my chest constrict when she flirts with another man?
This isn't dominance. This is something else entirely.
I grip the steering wheel again, forcing the words into existence inside my own head where no one else can hear them.
I might actually love her.
The admission sits there like a grenade with the pin pulled.
Not obsession dressed up as devotion. Not possession masquerading as protection.
Actual love. The kind that makes you rearrange your entire existence around someone else's orbit. The kind that turns you into a version of yourself you don't recognize—softer in some ways, more dangerous in others.
The kind that makes you give someone a card with your private number and Batcave address and then wait, like an idiot, for them to use it.
I force myself to take a deep breath.
Then another.
Then I do something so fucking pathetic I can barely stand myself.
I open a new document on my laptop and title it: Scarletta Desmond - Assessment.
Like I'm preparing a quarterly earnings report. Like she's a potential acquisition target that requires due diligence.
Like I'm a teenage girl with a fucking diary.
I start typing.
CONS.
My fingers hover over the keys for a moment before I commit.
She's a slob. Six months of surveillance footage doesn't lie. Dishes piled in the sink for weeks. Laundry mountains that probably qualified as biohazards. The blanket fort wasn't charming—it was depression architecture. She lived like someone who'd given up on herself completely.
She has no ambition. Forty-seven complete stories posted anonymously online for free. Not a single one submitted to an agent or publisher. Brilliant work rotting in digital obscurity because she's too terrified of rejection to even try. She'd rather starve than risk someone telling her she's not good enough.
She's financially incompetent. Four months behind on rent. Maxed credit cards. Student loans in default.
She ghosts people. Clients. Yoga instructors. Every man she's dated in the last six months. The second anything requires emotional vulnerability or follow-through, she vanishes. Runs away. Disappears like she never existed in the first place.
She lies to herself constantly. Attends support groups she doesn't belong to. Performs normalcy for strangers. Pretends she wants vanilla relationships with nice guys when her entire creative output is rape fantasies and psychological torture. She's a walking contradiction who refuses to admit what she actually needs.
She's a coward. Wrote Call of the Labyrinth and never published it. Signed up for the auction and then tried to pretend she didn't want it. Entered the maze and then ran away when I gave her exactly what she asked for.
I stop typing.
My jaw aches from clenching.
She ran away when you murdered someone in front of her, you absolute psychopath.
I delete that last line about the maze. That one's not fair. That one's on me.
I stare at the list.
Everything I wrote is true. Objectively, factually accurate.
She's a mess. A beautiful, brilliant, infuriating fucking mess.
And I'm sitting in a parking lot across from a gym making notes about her flaws like some kind of deranged consultant trying to talk himself out of a merger.
The problem is… I don't want to admit this but I have to. The problem is… I don't see a way forward without her.
My list grows, but this ones goes under the heading, Things I Can't Control Anymore.
Can't focus worth shit. I used to deliver surgical presentations at board meetings. Now I'm checking my phone every thirty seconds like some lovesick teenager waiting for a text that never comes.
Sleep's fucked. I used to run on five hours, sharp as a blade. Now I'm lucky if I get three, and those are full of her face, her voice, her new platinum fucking hair.
Surveillance has become my second job. I've got tactical teams deployed like she's a head of state. Three different shifts. Round-the-clock coverage. This is not normal behavior, even for me.
Haven't balanced the scales in months. Volk broke me. No, Caleb. Scarletta watching you kill him and then rejecting you, broke you.
How did this happen?
How?
How did I get here?
I scoff out loud, that's how ridiculous this question is.
Scarletta put me here.
I lean back in the driver's seat, letting my head hit the headrest.
Okay. Fine. Let's do this properly.
Let's make a real fucking list.
Why Scarletta Mae Desmond has hijacked my brain…
She has matching damage.
Every woman I've ever been with fell into one of two categories. The ones who got scared when they saw what I actually wanted, or the ones who tried to fix me like I was some kind of charity project.
My one real ex girlfriend saw my monster and looked at me like I was diseased. Like I needed therapy, and Jesus, and probably a lobotomy.