Page 124 of Controlled Burn
But Brooks?
Brooks had studied her.
She didn’t want respect. She wanted dominion.
And the men? They gave it to her. One by one. They knelt, touched, begged, crumbled.
Maddox still pretended he wasn’t one of them—but Brooks had seen him pacing and heard the late-night footsteps in the locker bay—Cross’s name on his lips like penance.
King, of course, was worse—starry-eyed and obedient.
And Jake… Jake was the wreckage of men like her. The kind who’d crawl through broken glass to taste the underside of her boot.
Violent men always fell hardest when they couldn’t be in control.
Brooks would use that.
Because, unlike them, he didn’t want to possess her.
He wanted to prove she could bleed.
Back in his office, he reopened the surveillance index.
Three feeds. Four backups. One encrypted external with timed-deletion failsafes.
If she wanted to set a trap? Let her.
He welcomed it.
Because the thing about traps was simple:
They only worked if the prey didn’t bite back.
And Brooks?
Brooks had teeth.
And he’d already tasted smoke.
Chapter 45
Pressure Vessel
Jake Hastings
The video hit like a gut punch.
Jake watched the encrypted clip in his truck, sweat soaking the collar of his uniform, the cab thick with stale fries and last night’s rage. The glow of his phone lit up his reflection in the windshield—jaw clenched, eyes bloodshot, looking every bit as hollow as he felt.
He was always the center. The one girl chased, begged for, and clung to. Frat president. Captain of his world. No woman had ever turned him down—and if he lost interest, he ended it.
That’s how it worked.
Until Talia Cross.
He could still taste that night.
The bar. Whiskey on her breath. Her eyes were wild after Maddox called her“just a rookie”in front of everyone. Jake had never seen her that furious, that raw.
