Severed Ties: A Dark Stalker Romance (Tainted Love Book 1)
Severed Ties: Chapter 22

Something’s wrong.

Something more than just me crashing her date, telling her to strip or I was going to do it for her, and then pretty much insisting she be seen by a doctor. But none of that is plaguing my little fawn. I just can’t quite figure out what it is.

The last time she told me to leave, she was fine. She just went about her night as if nothing ever happened. But this is different. She holds the blankets around her like it’s all that’s keeping her together, like without them, she’ll fall apart and never be able to put herself back together again. The grainy feed doesn’t give me all I need to assess her properly, but I’d bet every last dollar I have that she’s been crying. Did I do this? Did I upset her?

I pace the length of my open-plan apartment without missing a beat. I have her bedroom camera up on the television, but it doesn’t seem to calm me. I need to go back. She needs me. Even if she never knows I’m there, she still needs me. The nights I spend standing beside her bed or lying beside her without her knowledge are the nights she sleeps the best. She’s more still than the ones I watch her on the cameras, more peaceful, and that’s all I ever want for her. Peace. I could give her that. I could give her every fucking thing, but I’m not sure she’s going to let me.

Too bad she doesn’t have a choice.

I move toward the computer against the far wall, barely glancing around the room as I go. All my furniture is black. In fact, everything I own is. The only part of me that has any color are the tattoos inked into my skin, and even those are few and far between. Just a few meaningful pieces that remind my cold dark soul there is light in this cruel world.

I check her messages and incoming calls first. Maybe that asshole Justin upset her. If he did, I’ll fucking end him. He’s already on thin fucking ice for touching my woman, he wouldn’t want to upset her on top of that. But there’s nothing there, and even when I move to her email accounts, it’s just sales emails and some work shit.

What has you so upset, little fawn?

I tap my fingers impatiently on the edge of the black desk. There has to be something I’m missing because even though she was upset when I left, she wasn’t like this. Clara doesn’t fall in on herself. Not unless there’s a good fucking reason, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.

Idly, I wonder if it’s too early to call Ace for an update, but I suspect he’d send someone to kill me if I were to do that. Brother or not, he doesn’t take too kindly to being rushed.

“What am I missing?” I murmur into the empty space.

The distance between us is making me itch, and the longer I sit here staring at the feed of her sleeping restlessly, the more agitated I become. Before I realize I’ve stood from my seat, I’m taking long strides across my apartment and picking up the keys for my Impala. On the nights I stand guard outside her building, I take the car. It’s more practical and less suspicious than a shady-looking guy on his bike. But I can’t go in tonight. No matter how badly I need to be near her. No matter how much I need to see with my own eyes that she’s okay, what I need doesn’t matter right now.

I told her I was going to give her tonight for space, and then tomorrow, I’ll be claiming what belongs to me.

The dark street is like home to me, even from inside my classic car. The matte-black finish shrouded in darkness allows me to fly under the radar, and each person that walks by has no idea the devil is lurking in the shadows. But I don’t care about them, nor do I give a fuck if they see me. My only focus is on the windows of the second floor. She’s in there, and she needs me.

The camera feed plays on my phone, her restlessness making me equally so. She tosses and turns, her body drenched in a thin layer of sweat despite the February chill. The longer this goes on, the closer I get to going in. I’ve done it almost every night since we first met, but tonight feels different. Like I should give her the space she needs, despite my own need to watch over her.

The passenger side door swings open and a body slips into the car beside me. I have my gun drawn and pressed against their temple before they can blink, but instead, they chuckle.

“That’s no way to treat your boss,” Storm says.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I snap.

“Everett called me. There was some suspicious activity at Clara’s apartment.” He turns in his seat to give me a knowing look. “More suspicious than you breaking in each night.”

I stare at him for long seconds. How the fuck do they know about that? “What kind of suspicious activity?”

“Not going to deny it then?”

“You know I’m not. You obviously know, so it would be senseless to try to deceive you.”

He nods, his eyes brushing over the image of Clara restlessly turning over before returning to me. “The camera feed in the hallway cut out for three minutes earlier tonight, not long before the two of you walked through the door.”

I look up at the window and dread seeps into my pores. Is he saying what I think he is? “Shouldn’t Everett be helping Wynter pop out his kid?”

“He gets alerts when this shit happens. I suppose it is still his job, even if he’s about to become a father.”

“Is there any possibility it was just a glitch in the tech?” I know the answer even before I ask the question, but the alternative seems too grim to accept without at least trying to fall into denial.

“I doubt it. Everett installed it himself on Clara’s first day with Frost.”

“Why?”

“You know as well as I do that being close to us is dangerous. She became a target that day, even if she is just Wynter’s personal assistant. Plus, Wyn saw a lot of promise in her, thought she’d climb the ladder, so we wanted to protect a potential asset.”

I nod my understanding. The Saint James family sees people for more than their résumé, and they adopt them into their lives, bringing with it a certain level of danger but also an endless amount of protection. It’s something that took me a long time to get used to when I started working for Storm’s father when I was a teenager. He took me under his wing, showed me I was more than the monster they made me, and I gained the family I was deprived of as a child.

“How long have you been stalking Clara?” he finally asks.

“Like you don’t already know.”

He chuckles and shakes his head. “I was hoping you might shine some light on it nonetheless.”

I sigh. I should be inside comforting her instead of sitting here answering questions from my nosy boss. “Since the first time I saw her. That day at Frost when Russo hurt her.” I shake my head like it will make it make any more sense, but I know it won’t. I’ve been trying to make sense of my fascination with my little fawn since day one. “I told myself I was just watching out for her in the beginning, just making sure she was okay after what she’d been through. But then it became a compulsion. I couldn’t go a day without watching her. I had to know she was okay at all times, and it became an obsession I have no intention of breaking.”

Storm smirks. “Sounds about right.”

“What’s that meant to mean?” I snap.

“It means you’ve gone through the same thing the rest of us have. It seems the men in the Mafia business fall hard and fast into obsession.”

I roll my eyes and focus back on the sleeping beauty on the screen. “It’s not the same.”

“Of course it isn’t.” The sarcasm drips from his voice, but I can’t turn my attention to him right now.

“How long did you say the camera was out for?”

“Three minutes.”

“Enough time for someone to get in and out without being noticed.”

“Exactly my thoughts.”

“But why would anyone want to break into Clara’s apartment? She’s not involved in the dark side of the business.”

“Unless there’s something we missed in her background check.”

I open my mouth to tell him I know for a fact that’s the case, but snap it shut again because I don’t want him to know I’m talking to Ace again.

The two sides of my family have never seen eye to eye, and the last thing I want to do is resurrect an old rivalry when I’m trying to work out what the fuck is happening with Clara. Because there’s a lot we don’t know about her, and I need to get to the bottom of it.