Page 24 of Oblivion

Okay. xx

14

EVAN

It’s an asshole thing to say, but money really can buy you almost anything you want. I know it’s true because right now, I’m watching Sammy and her mom climb into her dad’s BMW from inside the house opposite Sammy’s parents’ place.

While I was on the plane here last night, I had my lawyers reach out to the owners of the house opposite Sammy’s parents’ house to offer them an exorbitant amount of money for the use of their house for the next week. At first, they thought it was a joke, but when my lawyer assured them it wasn’t and had an extra ten thousand dollars put into their account as a sweetener, they packed up their car and drove away so fast it was almost funny.

The house is nice enough and very conveniently placed for me to keep an eye on my little wild one. Since I woke up, I’ve been expecting an irate call from her, demanding to know why she had my initials on an anklet around her foot, but my cell has been frustratingly silent.

I’m excited for her reaction to me being here. I want to see all her glorious anger and indignation at me being in her bedroom and attaching a piece of jewelry to her body without her consent, and her silence is infuriating.

For a while on the plane ride here, I did consider emanating Clay and putting cameras in her room, but in the end, I refrained. Partly because given my friend’s history, I thought she might expect that, and partly because I’m content to only invade her space when I’m physically in the same room as her.

Once her car pulls out of the driveway, I open the tracker app on my cell and watch the flashing dots move along the map. Once she’s far enough away, I slip into my rental car, open the garage door, and reverse out, making sure to hit the button to close the door as I start to follow after her at a distance.

Given the anklet, she must know I’m in DC, but as I’m guessing she will have searched for a tracker and not found one in her neck, I doubt she’s aware that I know exactly where she is and where she’ll always be for the rest of her life.

After suppressing my feelings for her for so long, it feels invigorating to finally accept that even though I’m an asshole and I’ll never deserve her, I’m going to make her mine anyway. At some point I’ll have to come to terms with the feelings of guilt that I’m sure I’ll eventually have over destroying her life, but right now, I’m riding the high of finally claiming her.

With all my shackles free, it’s taking all of my focus not to just take her. I don’t need a team of bodyguards or a convoluted plot that takes years to enact. I just need a split second—a moment of distraction—and I could make us both disappear. The case in my pocket has been refilled with needles full of ketamine, and not just enough to make her sleep for a few minutes, but doses that would last long enough to get us somewhere no one would ever find us.

But that’s Bastian’s, and maybe Hunter’s, style. Not mine. At least, not yet. That plan is my Hail Mary pass for if everything else goes to shit, or if Starling or the others try to take her from me. For now, I’m content to ensnare her, invisibly tethering her in silk until she’s entirely trapped. By the time she realizes she’sa prisoner, she won’t care, and I won’t have to destroy her to own her.

So, despite all the fucked-up, insane ideas that are luring me down the crazy rabbit hole, I’m staying in the light at the start of the tunnel. I’m biding my time until she’s naked in my arms, filled full of my cock, and wearing my ring on her finger and my name on her skin.

I’ve never admitted it out loud, but even though I regret hurting Starling so badly it changed her, I enjoyed the way we toyed with her life and corralled her until she was Bastian’s prisoner. It’s a fucked-up thing to confess, even to myself, but I liked blocking her attempts to get free. I enjoyed helping him control every aspect of her life. I liked systematically cutting off every person in her world so she only had us. Honestly, it wasn’t until I saw the wreckage our games had caused in her that I even considered that it was wrong to play with people like we did.

It’s not an excuse to say that our upbringing made us who we are, but it’s definitely part of the reason. My dad is a good guy. He loves me, and he provided for me in every way. But despite his cheerful demeanor and easy smile, he’s calculating and considered sometimes scarily calm, and he raised me to behave the same way.

We’ve never talked about it, but sometimes I wonder about his and Cassidy’s relationship. It’s clear he loves her, and she loves him, but how much did he manipulate her to create the relationship that he covets so closely?

She had a house when they met. She was independent, albeit flighty, erratic, and a bit of a kook. Now, she looks to my dad for everything. He plans her day, schedules her work, and organizes her book releases. He makes sure she eats, makes sure she takes care of herself, and doesn’t lose herself to her fictional worlds. He loves her deeply, but sometimes the level of control he has onher reminds me a little of how Bastian was with Starling when he first tricked her into coming to Kingsacre.

At first, I was in awe of the way my brother consumed Starling and made her his. After I saw Starling’s very visible, invisible scars, I started to wonder if wanting, craving, and needing that level of control was a genetic flaw that my dad passed to me.

It’s part of the reason I’ve denied my attraction to Sammy so fiercely. I didn’t just help Bastian trap and control my stepsister. I enjoyed it. I liked it and craved it, and the first time I saw Sammy, I considered a million ways I could make her mine in a way that she’d never be free from.

I know that deep down, I don’t deserve Sammy. I’ll never be worthy of her, and because of that, I’ve paid penance for my treatment of Starling by punishing myself and refusing to allow myself to have the woman I’ve loved since the first moment I saw her.

Even now that I’m actively pursuing her, I know I shouldn’t be here, that I shouldn’t have let myself out of the tiny cage I’ve forced myself into for the last eighteen months. Only I didn’t free myself. I didn’t forgive myself or diminish my actions. Starling opened my door. She freed me and offered me absolution. She shucked off my chains and pushed me toward Sammy with carte blanche to become the monster I’ve spent the last eighteen months repressing. And if this all goes to shit, it’ll be as much her fault as it is mine.

After connecting my cell to the screen on the car, I watch the three dots on the tracking app come to a stop. When I check the address of where she is, I recognize it as Drew’s parents’ house. Even though I know she’s not there to see him, it still bothers me that she’s in his home.

The asshole—who will never be touching my girl ever again—got on a plane back to Massachusetts this morning. According tothe private investigator I had look into, Sammy’s soon-to-be ex-fiancé, Drew is a member of the Omega Epsilon fraternity, and the Harvard chapter will be joining several other chapters from Ivy League schools across the country on their annual retreat for the next four days.

When I think about frats, I envision wild parties, salacious orgies, and general youthful excess that will become known as the members’ glory days when they’re old, fat, and gray. But according to my investigator, when the Omega Epsilons get together, it’s more of a political gangbang than a sexual one.

A scary number of local, state, and national politicians are Omega Epsilon alum, and their retreats are less debauchery and more of a networking event for the country’s next generation of wannabe leaders.

Parking just around the corner from Drew’s family’s home, I watch as Sammy, her mom, and a third woman climb into the car before they pull onto the road again. Not moving, I wait five minutes before I slowly follow again.

My girl spends the morning touring an ostentatious wedding venue with her mom and ex-future mother-in-law. Sammy looks cute, in a conservative way, but I’m more used to seeing her in leggings and a sports bra or sexed up to drive me crazy on a night out than the way she’s dressed now, like an expensive soccer mom.

Another call I made on the plane was to Sammy’s security team, who are now, at my request, all wearing body cams. Even though I haven’t been within a hundred feet of her all day, I’ve watched her follow the two older women through ballrooms and breakfast rooms before they all went and ate lunch at the country club they’re all members of.

Sammy doesn’t exactly look sad, but she clearly isn’t as excited as she was when she video-called Starling yesterday morning. Apparently, the moms are looking to start planninga wedding, but my girl doesn’t look like she’s itching to pick out flowers and napkin colors. Instead, she looks distracted and thoughtful.

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