Page 182 of Fractured Devotion

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This isn’t conditioning. This is her grief laid bare.

I see pieces of her here I’ve never touched. Never owned.

And something sharp and unfamiliar twists in my chest, something that feels like guilt.

I finish, repacking the box exactly as I found it and placing it back beneath the desk with careful precision.

She’ll never know.

I slip out, locking everything behind me.

As I close my apartment door behind me again, the weight of what I’ve done settles.

Now I have her truths.

And I can’t stop wondering if they’ve already wrecked me too.

Today, every one of her secrets becomes mine.

I don’t even wait to take off my coat.

I sit in the surveillance room again, pulling up the photos one by one on the tablet. The contents glare back at me, raw and undeniable.

I comb through every letter, every page, and every scrawled name.

Her father wasn’t just a bystander. He was a whistleblower. A threat.

Her mother didn’t simply die. She was erased.

Everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve ever thought I knew about her, fractures.

Her childhood wasn’t stolen by accident. It was meticulously dismantled by the very hands I once believed were mine to admire.

My breath comes slower now, but heavier. There’s something old and violent coiling inside my chest, something that feels like rage.

Rourke.

That bastard.

This wasn’t research.

It wasn’t science.

It was cruelty. Precision-forged cruelty.

I lean back in my chair, staring at her photos, at the fragile scraps of the little girl she once was.

And it hits me harder than I’m willing to admit.

I want her. I’ve always wanted her.

But this? This isn’t about obsession anymore.

It’s about retribution.

I can’t stop the dark smile that pulls at my lips.

They’re going to pay for this.

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