Page 36 of Whispers of Ruin

“What, no!”

“Liar.” His fingers tighten around my wrist, pinning me. “You let him touch you.”

I cannot believe what I’m hearing.

“Oh my God, stop, I thought it was you!”

His grip shifts, pushing my wrist above my head, stretching me beneath him on the floor until I am fully at his mercy.

“I don’t give a fuck even if you though I was the fucking pope.” His lips graze my ear. “You belong to me.”

All I long to tell him is that he is right, that he has conquered me in every way, that I am his now. That my heart bears his mark as clearly as my arm, indelibly stained with his presence, with his claim. I offer myself to him—surrendering in exchange for comfort, protection, and the promise of love that feels as tangled and consuming as the maelstrom he stirs within me.

I am still adrift in the uncertainty of whether I am nothing more than an object for him to possess—an item in his psychotic collection. Deeper still, I wonder if he can hold me close in any form other than the suffocating grip of ownership and dominance.

My devotion to him would be boundless, but he must show me, in the quiet spaces between us, that I am more than a mere possession. That I am worthy beyond the cold distance of control—that I am, in the end, real,human. Only then will I surrender fully, heart and soul. Until that moment, I remain lost in the swirling uncertainty of what he genuinely wants from me.

Xan senses the shift in my attitude immediately. I see it in the rigid set of his shoulders; in the way his breath slows. Just as swiftly, he pulls away. He steps back as if shrugging off an unwelcome weight, a presence he no longer wants.

Me.

Without a word, he pivots toward the door, his movements clipped, decisive. Confusion flares in my chest.

“That’s it? We’re just leaving him here?”

He turns his head slightly, unreadable, as if my question were no more than idle small talk.

“You’re right.”

Reaching into his pocket, he withdraws a thick stack of cash and tosses it onto the bed. The bills land like fallen leaves over the crimson-soaked sheets, soft, indifferent to the ruin beneath them. His phone is already in hand, his fingers moving with that same calculated ease. A muted voice crackles through the receiver.

“Room 592. Floor 28. Premium cleaning.” Flat. Unbothered.

He ends the call without ceremony, tucking the phone away, and strides toward the exit without so much as a peek in my direction.

“Are you staying the night? Because I doubt he’s in any shape to make you come.”

The words are venomous, laced with anger, even jealousy. But it is the insinuation that makes my blood boil. After everything, he is still questioning whether I wanted that man’s touch. He still sees possibilities where there should absolutely be none. I exhale, pressing against the weight of my exhaustion, my frustration. Yet bitterness festers. Festers and rots.

“Funny. I think I’d have a better chance of coming with a corpse than with you.”

The second the words settle into the room, I know I have left a wound. Yet no reaction. No flare of anger. No flicker of suffering.

Nothing.

His stare is hollow, endless, gazing into the mouth of an abyss. Without another word, he turns, stepping into the hallway. His departure is a careful, unhurried severing. Just as he crosses the threshold, I hear it—so quiet I almost miss it.

“Should have left her to him.”

Istalk down the corridor, every step reverberating with the sting of my own words, circling back, growing heavier, sharper, sinking their claws into me like a curse I can’t shake.

Betrayal.

I should have slammed her down. Pressed her into the unforgiving floor, wrists crushed beneath my grip, her body convulsing under the raw violence she dared to summon. I should have torn through her defiance, skin blooming purple beneath my hands, blood smearing under my fingers like war paint. I should have marked her—bruised, bitten, bleeding—until her screams turned to silence, until the lesson etched itself into the marrow of her bones turning the soft curve of her butt a furious shade of red. Again. And again. Until nothing remained but obedience and the echo of my name in her throat.

You don’t get to speak to me like that.

Not when I am tearing apart every damn thing I have ever known for you. Not when I am fucking unraveling at the seams for you.

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