Page 40 of Sinful Desires
I hacked into her security system in under thirty seconds with my phone. Her passwords were a joke.
She never even knew I was there. Never even opened her eyes.
I laid her in bed, tucked her in, and stared at her long enough to memorize the sound of her breathing. Then I slipped the scarf from around her neck, still warm, and tied it tightly around my wrist. Her star-shaped necklace already hung from my throat, an echo of a previous night, not unlike this one.
I rarely took it off. It stayed under my shirt, close to my skin. It only came off when I showered or was sweating too hard to ignore it.
I’d looked back once then walked out, fingers twitching.
But that had been the moment. The one that had fucked meforever.
After that, seeing her had become my new obsession. Every two days, like clockwork, I had to check on her. Had to know she was breathing. If she was traveling or on tour, I’d track her down. Pull up security footage, hack camera feeds, bribe hotel staff if I had to.
I made sure she was safe, even though I couldn’t fucking protect her from herself. She was a walking disaster. Pills, parties, press. One bad night away from ending up in a morgue.
But I saw it every damn time—in her eyes, in her voice, in the way she smiled.
Scarlett Harper was the kind of broken you don’t fix.
You bury it or you bleed from it.
But three weeks ago, something had hit me when I saw her kneel next to that girl in the blue beanie. She was four, maybe five years old, hooked to an IV stand with eyes too tired for her age. Scarlett had tucked a stuffed panda under her arm and whispered something that made the kid snort-laugh hard enough to make the machine beep.
That wasn’t charity. That was a girl who knew pain and wanted to steal someone else away from it, even if just for a second.
She hadn’t just given them a million-dollar check. She’d given them a break from dying.
So yeah, maybe the script I kept shoving down my throat about her, the one where she was selfish and spoiled and easy to hate, had never really worked. I had spent years clinging to it, telling myself I could. That it would be easier. Safer than this. Safer than the truth. Safer than seeing her for what she really was?…?a girl begging to be loved, twisting herself into whatever shape the world demanded, killing off pieces of her soul just to be accepted.
Safer than admitting she had made me want to fucking live. Because she did. She made me stay. Kept me breathing. Kept me rotting here.
I had told the angel of death to wait a little longer, because my choice was already made. I was done with this life, but I just needed one more day to see her red hair, her sleepy blue eyes, and those sad full lips. But days had turned into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, and still my need to watch her never fucking faded.
And that truth gutted me.
Here I was, caring anyway. And I hated every fucking second of it.
Suddenly, a shattering thud cut through the silence. Something heavy hit the floor, like a body.
My gut clenched. I was moving before I knew it, the door cracking open with a sharp, splintering sound as it hit the wall behind it.
And then I saw her.
Scarlett was on the floor, one hand braced on the ground, the other covering her cheek. Her red hair hung down, hiding most of her face, but her body gave her away. She was trembling.
Lucius fucking Harper stood with his back to her, gazing out at the New York skyline like he hadn’t just laid a hand on his daughter. Like she wasn’t shattered on the floor behind him.
I moved without thinking, rage boiling up from the pit of my stomach, thick and blinding. But before I could reach him, she pushed herself up and dusted off her clothes with shaking hands.
“It’s fine,” she said. “He’s done now.”
And I heard it again. The same broken voice from three years ago, soaked and shaking in a fountain of marble and lies.
“I hate him so fucking much.”
I didn’t need to see the red blooming on her cheek or the faint swell rising beneath her skin. I knew. The fucker had hit her.
I moved one step closer, then another, until my knuckles ached from clenching. I was seconds away from losing everything.
