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From the moment they walked me back onto the wing to the moment the lights went out, I had a torn piece of a woman’s uniform in my fist. And there was not one second of it where I considered doing otherwise. I had lost count of the number of times I had held it to my nose and breathed her in.

I have owned a great many things. My father made sure of it, the way men of his generation always do. As though a watch and a car and a house on a hill were proof that a boy had turned out correctly. None of it ever meant a thing to me. I couldn’t even tell you what happened to most of it.

And there I sat on a prison bunk, thumbing the seam of a scrub top like a rosary.

Pathetic.

Yet I didn’t stop.

Because it still had her on it. Faint, going fainter, that warm clean sugar that had shut off thirty years of noise in my skull the first time it reached me. And every hour it faded a little further and every hour I found myself lifting it and breathing it in again like a man checking a wound.

So I ran the whole morning back again. Frame by frame, the way you do with a thing you intend to keep. I swear it had been the most fun I’d had in years, as even killing those who deserved it hadn’t scratched an itch like this.

The noise she made when she came through that door and found me waiting. That small, undignified sound, like a cornered animal finding a wolf in its pen.

And the way she went backward into the wood hard enough to shake it in the frame. I have had men beg. I have had men make sounds I couldn’t describe to you in words. Not one of them had ever sent a thrill through me like she had.

I had half expected her to run, but then she eyed the chains like a lifeline and clung to the hope that they would be enough to keep her safe.

Foolish little rabbit.

I had almost laughed at her the second that professional mask of hers fell over her face. Her fake little ‘Good morning. What is it today?’ had made me smirk sadistically, as I had known what was coming. That I would finally get to touch her and I couldn’t fucking wait for her reaction to it… Of course, she didn’t disappoint.

But I also admired her strength, as even shaking, even white to the lips, she stood in that room and put on that pleasant, capable, forgettable mask and offered it to me like a shield made of paper.

I wanted to know who taught her to do that. And then I wanted to know what he looked like so I could break him apart with my bare hands.

Because I knew all too well what kind of behavior does that to a woman. What makes her that way. Which was why I was going to great lengths to discover all I could about her fake little world of lies. Not only so I could tear it apart piece by piece but also so that I could bathe in the blood of anyone who had wronged her. Anyone who had dared touch her.

I would kill them all.

Because only I was permitted to touch her. To break her. To ruin her for anyone else. She would be my perfect little plaything. My doll to mold into exactly what I wanted her to be. In fact, up until the moment I saw her that morning, I hadn’t been completely sure if I would hurt her or not. Part of me despised her for planting the seed of this obsession. For consuming my thoughts, like no one else before her.

But then she turned around and understood there was no guard, and every drop of blood went out of her face at once. It was nothing short of fucking spectacular.

Fucking beautiful.

However, it wasn’t the fear I kept going back to and that surprised me. I didn’t much care for surprises.

That being said, I respected her for it.

The surprise being that she fought me.

Christ, how she had fought me. Five foot four of a frightened nurse and she came at my ribs with a closed fist. Then she went for my face with her nails and tried to put a knee into me. Fuck, if anyone else in that building had tried that shit, I would have killed them for the attempt. There wasn’t one person in my adult life who had been brave enough to raise a hand to me without a weapon in it and here she was, doing it anyway. And honestly, I don’t think I have ever enjoyed anything so much.

But then under my hand, when I held her captive against that wall, her heart hammered against her chest like something trapped in a box desperate to get out. I fucking loved that fire in her eyes, even when they were overflowing with tears. Tears I equally loathed and craved to see.

And then there was the sound.

Three times that small machine on her arm called out for her while I had her pinned to that wall. Three times, and she let it. Then she looked up at me with her blood running empty underneath her and told me it was nothing.

It’s nothing.

I have heard a great many lies in my life. Men have lied to me with their own teeth on the floor in front of them. Not one of those ever bothered me the way that one did.

Because I had said it myself. Those exact words, in that exact voice, to my father, standing in front of him with something in me that he had just broken on purpose.

It’s nothing.