is possessiveness now cloaked in a veneer of care. He replaced the necklace of broken pencils with a simple g

thought I had chosen hi

ed. It wasn' t a poison, nothing so crude. It was a mild sedative, just enough to cloud his judgment, to fray the edges of his s

he murmured one night, his head resting in my lap a

th a hand that didn' t tremble. It was an act, every touch

allowed me to go to the building' s private art studio, a concession he' d made after I' d "p

ehind a stack of blank canvases, was a bur

' s

Thorne' s voice was smooth, controlled, a

, keeping my voice low. "He' s more pliabl

" Marcus said. "It' s his magnum opus. Security will be tigh

is was never just about saving me. It was

need me to d

with that guard... He paraded you in front of his board the next day." Marcus' s tone shifted, a posses

all the same. He didn' t see me, Scarlett Hayes, the artist. H

said, my voice

' t w

gement. You help me get my life back and ruin him in th

appreciative sound. "Of course. My apologies. You

o, the smell of turpentine sharp in the air. I was walking a

ing for me. The sedative had clearly worn off. His e

a framed sketch, one of my old ones from before he had found

I miss watching you create. I thought if I owned the art

ce was a profoundly broken man, clinging to something he could never truly possess. He was

predator spotting a weakness in its prey. I walked over to him, g

ftly, my mind already plotting my next move. I would use his weakness,

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