Chapter 38 Chapter 38
Kai
When we hit the lobby, Rob was already there, waiting with the files I had asked for. I grabbed them from him and walked out the doors, ignoring the cold. I looked up at the tower; she was probably worried, but this was the only way. I continued walking.
“Boss, where are you going?” Rob asked.
“Hunting, stay with her and make sure she doesn't leave,” I said.
Jax followed without a word. People assume killers move with chaos. Alex didn’t. He was methodical. Neat. Quiet. His only flaw was arrogance, his belief that no one could catch him because no one had so far. He was wrong, because I had his patterns mapped out. I had his habits, I had his tendencies, and I had something he’d never had: resources.
I slid into the back seat of the SUV and tossed the files across the leather. I pulled up the tracking app I kept hidden from everyone but myself. No towers were pinging his phone. No cards had been used. No cameras had spotted him, which meant he was using cash and staying off-grid.
Typical and smarter than I expected
“I want every florist within a twenty-mile radius checked for any recent purchase of yellow roses,” I ordered. “Cash only. Ask for footage. Pull the deliveries for the last forty-eight hours.”
“Yes, sir,” Jax said. “And I want the Ruslan family watched.”
That caught him off guard. “The family? Why?”
“It’s his family; he’ll want to be near them. His fucktard twin was buried two months ago. He’ll get close. He’ll want to feel the grief.” Jax made a face. “That’s sick.”
“That’s him.” I leaned back in the seat, closing my eyes for a second.
If Tessa knew how long Alex watched her before I got involved, if she knew the things he collected…if she knew the lists he kept… She’d never sleep again.
And for the first time, I hated that she didn’t know, not because I wanted her scared…. Fear was useless unless it was directed at someone or something. I hated it because she still thought I was the bigger monster; she still thought I was her captor and enemy, the threat. She didn’t understand, not yet.
I didn’t save people for morality, and I didn’t protect them out of goodness. I protected what was mine, and she was mine, not because she agreed or because she wanted to be. But because the world she came from would rip her apart if she wasn’t, and Alex was proof of that.
“You think he’ll try to come into the tower?” Jax asked.
“No,” I said. “He’ll wait until she’s alone; he’ll want her terrified first.” I said,
“Then we keep her inside,” Jax added.
“Exactly.” But that wasn’t enough. Alex knew fear; he knew how to build it, and he knew how to weaponize it. He’s done it to her for years, which means to get him, I had to be worse than he was.
I opened the file and stared at the forensic photos. Mark’s body. The damage, the bruising, the slash to his neck. Alex had seen these.
He’d studied them, too. Which meant he was hunting me for revenge as much as he was hunting Tessa for obsession.
“Does she know?” Jax asked carefully. “About what he did to Mark? The family?”
“No,” I said. “She knows enough. The details won’t change anything.”
The car went quiet because he knew they’d seen the reports too.
Mark wasn’t innocent; neither was Alex. The Ruslan twins were the kind of men who weren’t stopped by police or morality. Only force, by fear or by someone more ruthless. Someone like me.
But Tessa didn’t understand that. She thought I killed the wrong brother out of rage. She didn’t know the truth.
I killed Mark because he was the one who first raped her. He broke into her house, he left fingerprints on her dresser, and he watched her shower through the window and recorded it. I killed him because he whispered her name while dragging a knife across her doorframe the night before she ran.
I killed him because he deserved it and because Alex deserved to feel that loss, but she didn’t know any of that, not yet. She thought I did it to claim her, to chain her. She didn’t understand the kind of men she attracted.
She didn’t understand that by the time I got involved, it was already too late for her to go back to a normal life.
I opened my phone and watched the dot that represented the tower.
I watched her apartment camera feed, not the bedroom, never the bedroom, but the living room, just enough to confirm she was fine. She was sitting on the couch again, knees hugged to her chest, staring at the orchid like it personally offended her.
Good. Fear kept her alert, and anger kept her alive. Eventually, she’d stop shaking every time I entered a room, she’d stop flinching when I spoke, and
She’d stop assuming the worst of me. Eventually, she’d understand the truth.
I closed my phone. “Take me to the warehouse,” I ordered. “We’re starting tonight.”
Jax hesitated. “Sir… that place? We use that for…”
“I know what we use it for,” I said. “And now we use it to prepare for Alex,” I said. “I want every tool ready, every room cleared, every camera installed. When I find him, I’m bringing him there.”
“And when you do?” Jax asked.
I cracked my knuckles slowly.
“When I do,” I said calmly, “he’ll wish Mark’s death was the worst thing that ever happened to him.”
Tessa
I woke up the next morning with that strange, heavy silence still clinging to the apartment. You know that feeling when you wake up somewhere unfamiliar and your brain needs a second to catch up? It was like that, except the place wasn’t unfamiliar... I was.
Everything felt like a different version of reality, like I had stepped through some invisible door last night and ended up in a version of Manhattan where nothing could ever be normal again.
I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, not ready to move, not ready to think too hard. My body felt… I don’t know. Strange. Like it belonged to me, but at the same time, like someone had rearranged all the pieces of who I was overnight. Kai wasn’t here, and that should’ve made me feel relieved, but it didn't.
But all it did was remind me that he didn’t need to be here to control the entire atmosphere of this apartment. His absence was somehow louder than when he was actually standing in front of me.
I finally forced myself to sit up. The room looked untouched, but I could tell he’d been here. There was a soft indentation on the chair near the window, like someone had sat there for a while. Probably watching me. Probably thinking. Probably planning whatever the hell he planned when he lurked around in the dark like some six-foot-four shadow demon in designer clothes. My stomach twisted.