Page 55 of My Masked Savior
“I love you too.”
Every time she says those words, they stun me.
I never thought I’d love anyone. Never thought I was capable of it after what I’d seen, what I’d done. Love was for people who hadn’t watched their mother bleed out on the kitchen floor. For people who didn’t spend their nights hunting monsters and disposing of bodies in industrial crematoriums.
I’d convinced myself that the capacity for that kind of feeling had died with her. That my father had killed more than just my mother that night—he’d killed whatever softness might have existed in me.
Then Morgan happened.
She looked up at me with those dark eyes during a panic attack, vulnerable and terrified, and something dormant cracked open inside my chest. Every carefully constructed wall I’d built crumbled the moment I touched her. The conviction that I was too damaged, too broken, too stained with blood to deserve anything good—she shattered it without even trying.
She saw the darkness in me and didn’t run. Watched me torture Marco to death and asked to stay. Accepted every twisted, violent part of who I am and still whispered that she loved me.
I brush my thumb across her bottom lip, watching the way her pupils dilate.
“Say it again,” I murmur.
“I love you, Damien.”
The words settle into my bones, filling spaces that have been hollow for over twenty years.
Thank you for reading My Masked Savior, our first co-write novella! Loved it? Damien would appreciate it if you left a rating and a few kind words on GoodReads and Amazon!
Are you excited for My Masked Shadow, which is Ethan’s book? Pre-order it on Amazon!
It’s out on December 31st, and here’s what it’s about:
I'm in her firewall. She's undermy skin.
I don’t need to creep down dark alleys to stalk her.
I have the internet. I have her passwords.
I have everything.
Barbara thinks she knows me—the loudmouthed, cocky brother-in-arms of her best friend’s boyfriend. The one who’s always too much, too boisterous, too inappropriate.
She doesn’t know the other me.
The one who lives in the shadows of her devices.
I see her through her cameras.
Hear her through her mic.
Watch her play our favorite game at night, hair in a messy bun, soft little sighs spilling into my headset while she’s convinced I’m just another player, another anonymous stranger online.
She thinks she hates me. But she can’t stay away from me online.
And she has no idea the man behind the screen is the same one who watches her move through her apartment like a living fever dream.
I’m not an assassin like Killian. Not a vigilante like Damien.
I’m a different kind of predator—one who worms his way past firewalls the same way he worms his way into a life.
Barbara doesn’t realize she’s already mine.
But soon, she’ll understand:
