Page 32 of Fear Me, Love Me

After all I’ve done for her?

Spite and rage roar in my heart. I promised Vivienne the moon, and she threw it in my face. I fought for her, bled for her, made myselffeelfor her. I have thought of nothing but her since the moment we met, and she thinks she can toss me aside?

Decide all by herself that it’s over?

This will never be over.

I’ll have her, or I’ll end this world and everyone in it.

Outside, something white and sparkling is lying on the stairs. I pick it up and turn it over in my hands. Vivienne’s angel mask. She was running from me so fast that it fell off, or she tore it off in her haste.

I hurl it away from me with a snarl of rage and stride down the steps. I’ll find her. She can’t hide from me for long when I’ve put a fucking tracker in her.

10

Vivienne

Irun through the deserted streets, blinded by tears and the crushing weight of despair in my heart. I thought there was some goodness in Tyrant. I thought he was only a little bit crazy. A little bit violent. A little bit obsessed and unhinged.

Dad telling me that everything bad that’s happened to our family is all my fault killed my last scrap of love for him, my last pitiful hope I had of ever winning his approval, but can Tyrant really believe I want him and Samantha dead for the pain they’ve caused me? I keep picturing them both dead on the kitchen floor, and Barlow wailing between their blood-spattered bodies.

Barlow can’t be orphaned because of me. It’s too cruel. A baby needs his parents.

At the front door to my dorms, I’m panting as I push the code into the lock. It opens with a beep but I take a furtive look behind me before I cross the threshold. The street is deserted. No Tyrant. Yet.

But he must be following me, which means I can’t stay here. I can’t rely on my family for help and protection, which means I should probably leave Henson for a little while at least. I need some breathing space from everything that’s happened. I don’t trust myself not to give in to Tyrant’s dangerous seduction the moment he pushes me against a wall and slams his mouth over mine. I’m too addicted to that man.

The next ten minutes are critical if I’m going to slip away where he can’t reach me. I hurry upstairs, and for the first time in my life as I reach my room and pull out my cutting box, I’m not thinking about the sweet agony and release of blood and pain.

I feel around for the lump in the back of my neck and press it down and hold it in place. With the sharpened edge of my knife, I make a small cut in my flesh and try to squeeze the tracker out. A drop of blood runs down my back, but the tracker won’t budge. I cut deeper this time, wincing as the knife slices into my flesh. After digging painfully around with my nails, I grasp hold of something small and hard, and pull it out.

In my blood-coated fingers is a small piece of plastic embedded with an electronic chip. I drop it onto my desk and stare at it in horror. There it is. Undeniable proof that Tyrant has been tracking my every move since the first night we met.

I pick up a high heel and use the metal spike to crush the tracker into an unrecognizable mess of splintered plastic and twisted metal and then throw it out of the window.

The back of my neck is bleeding, and I reach into my cutting box for a bandage, but instead, I draw out a small piece of paper. The box is filled with them. Little folded notes.

It takes me a moment to remember what they are. Tyrant put them in my cutting box the last time he was here, but I was too far gone in a post-sex and violence haze to wonder what he was doing.

I unfold the note and read his elegant, slanted handwriting. I read another and another.

Say the word, and I’ll make them bleed for you.

If someone hurts you, I will make them suffer tenfold.

Knives cut deep, but my obsession for you cuts deeper.

Your pain doesn’t control you. I do.

The notes flutter from my shaking fingers and onto the floor. Why couldn’t I see what was in front of me all along? Not an intriguingly dangerous man, but a psychopath. My loneliness made his obsession seem romantic. My damage turned him from a villain into a hero. I should have known that I’d fall for the first toxic man who came my way and that the sweet words he said to me about starting a family weren’t sweet at all. He held me down and fucked me raw against my will, and my twisted heart mistook that for love.

Screw my bleeding neck. I don’t care. I just want to get out of here. I grab a backpack and begin stuffing clothes and toiletries inside. I take off my masquerade costume and pull on jeans and a sweater. My face and hands are ghost-white from makeup, but I haven’t got time to wash them right now.

My knife is lying on the carpet, and I take a moment to tape it to the inside of my wrist with bandages, inside my sleeve. You never know when you might need a weapon.

With the backpack over my shoulder and my hand on the door, I take one last look around my room. This has been my happy place since I started college. In this room, I’ve felt safer and more myself than I ever did living with Mom or with Dad and Samantha. All my favorite things are on the walls. Drawings. Pictures. Swatches of colors and fabrics. It hurts so much to leave it all behind.

I take a deep breath and harden my heart. If I stay, Tyrant will continue to hurt and threaten my family because he thinks he has a chance with me.

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