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Two months out there on her own, running, hiding, working double shifts in a building full of dangerous men, and not one single person on this earth making sure she had eaten or that she was safe.

Nobody looking after her. Nobody even watching.

It infuriated me.

But the emotion also startled me. Because the reality was that I have never in my life cared what happened to another person’s body except in terms of what I intended to do to it. I had watched men starve… I had made them starve. I had watched men break and I had been the one to break them.

Meaning there was a very short list of things capable of moving me and it had never once been because of a girl’s weight loss and the feel of her ribs in my hands. I had also never wanted to put someone in a chair and feed them myself.

That was not just obsession.

No, I knew exactly what obsession felt like. It had been living inside me since the day I first smelled her, and there is nothing complicated about it. It wants, it takes, and it does not care what that costs anybody.

However, this was something else entirely.

This was the sight of her looking thin, exhausted and completely uncared for. Which was why something in me went cold and murderous over it, with nowhere at all to direct it.

Since then, I had been very careful not to look too closely at what it meant.

But I knew.

Of course I fucking knew.

It was one of the many reasons I grinned to myself the second I heard her footsteps coming down the corridor. I rose to my feet and purposely stood next to the door waiting for her, just so I could hear her gasp of shock when she heard my voice. I fucking craved every reaction she had to give me and she didn’t disappoint.

She never did.

Then the shutter went back, and she leaned in to look for me. I let her look at an empty room for about four seconds.

“There she is.”

The chair went over behind her, as I heard her breath go, before I stepped across and put my face into the panel to look down at her through the glass.

“There’s my little bird,” I said with a smirk as her hand flattened against her chest.

“You,” she said, and stopped, and started again. “You can’t do that… you nearly gave me a heart attack!” she scolded, making me chuckle.

“Were you not expecting me?” I teased, which was out of character for me but unsurprisingly, it came easy and without any effort at all when faced with her.

She scoffed at that and shook her head,

“Why did you do it?”

“I am afraid you will have to be a little more specific, little bird,” I replied, keeping my grin in place as I watched her decide which part of it to accuse me of first. Something which took her about three seconds, and every one of them was a pleasure to watch.

“Oh, you know exactly what you did and I’m not talking about scaring me.”

“Ah… That.” Oh yes, this was fun.

“You broke a man’s fingers,” she hissed before looking down the corridor to check we were alone, which I already knew we were.

“He is fortunate that I stopped at his fingers,” I replied, making her gorgeous hazel eyes widen.

“You can’t say things like that,” she claimed, and my smirk grew.

“What would you like me to say instead?” I goaded playfully.

She didn’t have an answer for that, so I gave her the truth, which was generally the last thing anybody expects.