Page 164
That was the plan, but then he looked at me from my lap, naked and tear-streaked and still trying to understand why I wasn’t disgusted by him, and something in me simply—
Went.
I don’t have a better explanation.
Maybe I should feel more remorseful than I do, because I know what the circumstances are. He’s nineteen, inexperienced, and starved for any scrap of attention; he looks at his kidnapper like a savior anytime I compliment him.
I also know he spent the afternoon into evening believing an accident might make me stop caring about him, and there are men who would look at that vulnerability and see an opening.
Men I would happily kill.
I’m not stupid enough to pretend I’m morally different simply because I care about what happens to him afterward.
And yet—
I look at his sleeping face, and drag my thumb slowly through the hair above his ear. “You made me lose my fucking mind, Kammie.”
He doesn’t stir, which isn’t surprising in the least. I’ve seen experienced submissives come out of scenes ten times more intense and still hold some small thread of awareness, a fingertip twitch or a soft sigh if you shift them. Not him. Not only is Kamden as inexperienced as it gets, but he’s also all raw nerve endings beneath the anxiety, a live wire stripped down to copper. Every scrap of praise, every brush of my hand, every murmured instruction—he drinks it like a man dying of thirst handed cool water. And now that he’s finally had a taste of it, he’s wrung out past exhaustion.
That should make me cautious, and it does, but a fucked-up part of me looks at it with relief.
Because Mathias knows.
The thought cuts through the warmth like cold steel. My eyes lift from Kamden’s sleeping face to the far wall, blank and white in the low light.
Mathias knows the witness is alive. There’s no question anymore.
Whatever game he’s playing by refusing to confront me, the silence won’t last. Mathias is patient. That’s what makes him dangerous.
Quillan explodes; Mathias watches.
He’ll give me enough rope to show him exactly what I intend to do with it, and only then decide whether he approves of the knot.
Sooner or later, he will see Kamden.
Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next week. But eventually.
And when he does, I need him to see something other than a witness I kept alive because of a ghost. A witness is a liability—a frightened nineteen-year-old who hates the Grecos, saw one of their men put a bullet in Wade’s skull, someone who could talk to cops if he ever gets loose. That’s a problem Mathias knows how to solve cleanly.
But my boy?
That changes the equation.
The thought comes so easily that I stop breathing for a second.
My boy.
Jesus.
Yet it is already true inside my head. Maybe it became true in the bath, or maybe earlier. Maybe the first time I watched him sleeping through a camera, or as far back as watching him organize soups in the grocery store.
Doesn’t matter when.
Mathias understands loyalty better than most people understand love.
If he looks at Kamden and sees a captive, he sees danger. But if he sees a boy curled up against my side, looking at me before he answers questions, trusting me to feed him, dress him, and decide what happens next, that danger dissipates.
A man whose safety, comfort, home, school, money, and emotional world are tied to me has very little incentive to destroy the organization that employs me.
