Page 3 of Reclaiming Adelaide

I took two more steps and pressed my finger into her chest. “Don’t play dumb with me, little girl. I’ll destroy everything you’ve ever dreamed of. I’ll eviscerate wants and desires you haven’t even thought of yet. And just when you think it’s all over, you’ll look to the future, but there’ll be nothing but a black hole before you.”

My stomach pinched as the hate spewed without a filter, but she did this to me. She turned the simplest emotion and amplified it to the extreme. How could I think straight with her in the room?

She shook her head, her mouth gaping, and I walked away from her, putting distance between us. I paced her apartment—her phone still clenched in my fist.

I’d bought this place for her. Searched high and low to fulfill her dreams, and this was the outcome.

A deceitful swindler.

“You’re scaring me, Jake.” She held her hands up between us. “Let me explain.”

“Yes. How about you explain your little plan to infiltrate my life, hack my company, and make a killing off mine and my employee’s backs?” I paused, waiting for her to deny my accusation, accept it, smile, frown, give me something, anything.

She stood like a statue carved by David himself.

“Bravo.” I clapped. “You’re a piece of shit just like the rest of those low-life hackers you associate yourself with.”

My veins bulged against my skin as my conflicted emotions battled about. I couldn’t look at her face without seeing my future with her, the things I wanted to dowithher. Now all I saw were the things I wanted to dotoher, and that scared the shit out of me.

“Jake, I wanted to tell you—” She stepped closer, her hand reached out for me.

“Don’t fucking touch me. You don’t have the right to come near me anymore.”

“But Jake…” Tears slipped down her cheeks, the same tears I’d lapped up earlier in the night. These waterworks were for me, but not mine. Nothing of hers was mine anymore.

I’d relinquished my claim on her and set fire to her existence.

She grabbed my hand, and my vision bled until a fog settled over me, and I responded without a thought.

My fingers gripped her fragile throat as I drove her backward, slamming her back against the wall. Her skull hit the drywall, rattling the dishes in the cupboards. She hissed out a strangled cry, her eyes wide like a frightened doe as a generic framed picture teetered and fell off the hook. The malodorous vibration of glass shattering against the floor spread across the room, causing a cataclysmic shift around us.

“You mean nothing to me.” I seethed, spittle bursting through my teeth. “You don’t exist.”

“I’m sorry.” She shook her head, her face burning crimson as the veins bulged in her throat against my tight grip. Her fingers clawed into my hard grasp as she choked out, “Don’t say that. Please.”

“I hope your unhappiness chokes the life from you.”

“Let me… e-explain.” Her strangled voice tore my conscience in two.

On the one hand, it turned my dick into a fucking rock, and on the other, it ground my nerves, freeing my rage.

“I wouldn’t trust a word you say.”

Adelaide clawed at my forearms, her nails drawing tiny beads of ruby liquid against my inked skin. Her grip loosened its hold on my wrist, and her eyes rolled.

It wouldn’t take much more to end it all, right here and now, but that’d be too easy. I released my grip on her throat and let her drop to her ass on the floor. Her hands held her throat as she wheezed.

“Jake… please.” A fit of coughs pulled her to her side. “Stop.”

“You don’t deserve my mercy, but remember, I gave it to you.” I bent down on one knee as I dropped her phone beside her and pushed a lock of her hair from her face so she could see me. “I’ll only say this once, so listen and listen well. If you come around me, my company… or hell, anyone I care about. I’ll destroy your life and the lives of everyone you’ve ever loved until the only thing left…”

She turned her face from me, but I snatched her chin and turned her gaze, forcing her to look into my eyes. “Until the only thing left is to draw the jagged blade across your throat.” I freed her jaw as another tear slipped down her face. “And if you think your friends will get away with it, think again. I’ll come after them too. Just you watch.”

I stood and grabbed my things, pausing to take in her shaking frame curled up on the floor.

Maybe I’d taken it too far, but so had she.

I slammed the door behind me, leaving her a sobbing mess and my guts torn to shreds.

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