Page 96 of Santa Daddy
Told myself this was protection, not control.
The line between those stopped existing for me a long time ago.
That night,my real office felt smaller than usual.
Not the pretty study off the penthouse hall. The buried one—reinforced concrete, steel door, servers humming like distant bees, live feeds on the wall.
The Glock sat on my desk, no safety. Comforting weight. Useless against the one thing I actually feared.
I cycled through the cameras. Lobby. Street. Garage. Elevators. Service corridors. The penthouse.
On one feed, Dani paced in front of the white tree, his necklace bright against her throat. She picked up her phone, stared at it, set it down. Went to the window. Stood there too long. Turned away.
Twice she stopped outside the study door upstairs.
She didn’t knock.
She curled up on the couch again, book open but untouched, the throw wrapped tight around her like armor.
She had learned, faster than I wanted, how to make herself small in a cage.
She’s alive, I told myself. Those crosshairs are only ink and pixels. Whoever sent them will learn why that was mistake.
But alive didn’t feel like enough anymore.
I remembered her smile in that café. Sun on her hair. No cameras. No guards. No me.
I wanted that back. Wanted her to look at me without that flash of fear, without measuring what I would take next.
You do not get both, the cold part of me said. You do not get her alive and happy. You are not built for both.
I checked the gun again. Pointless. The slide moved smooth. The chamber was already loaded.
The real problem wasn’t out there with a rifle.
It sat in here. In my chest. In the way I only knew how to love with chains and orders and walls.
She didn’t know which was more dangerous—my enemies or my protection.
She was not wrong to ask.
My love was a weapon all on its own. Sharp. Heavy. Aimed at everything around it.
But it was what I had.
Maybe that had to be enough. For now.
Keep her breathing. Deal with the rest later.
Outside, snow fell on a city that would go on pretending there was such thing as peace. Kids slept under cheap trees. Their parents watched old movies. People believed in carols and wishes and clean slates.
They could afford that.
I watched the monitor where Dani lay on my couch in my apartment, wrapped in a blanket she hadn’t chosen, under a tree she hadn’t decorated.
I had put the crosshairs on her the second I decided to call her mine.
So I would do the only thing men like me are any good at: make sure anyone who tried to pull that trigger never got the chance to aim again.
