Nowhere Is Safe From Him

My father brought home a stray.

A secret son, a bastardwhatever you wanted to call him. He had this way of being perfectly submissive, always wearing a sweet, hollow smile and calling me big sister as if it were a title of devotion.

But behind my back, he was a gatekeeper of the most violent kind. He made sure no one else could get close to me. Any young man from a decent family who dared to get engaged to me ended up ruinedmaimed in accidents, or rotting in a prison cell.

When the truth finally came outthat I wasn't even the true daughter of the Blackwood estateI took the chance to vanish. I changed my name, moved across the country, and rebuilt my life from the ground up.

Seven years passed before I heard a whisper of that world again. My father was dead, and Darren had returned to the States to claim the empire.

The day it happened, I pulled up to my small house and saw a sleek, black sedan parked in the driveway. A man was leaning against the drivers side door, draped in a long, dark wool coat. In the twilight, he looked like a shadow carved out of the rain itself.

He tilted his head when he saw me, a slow, familiar smile spreading across his face.

"Elena. Its pouring. Why didn't you bring an umbrella?"

I looked at him, my blood turning to ice. "What the hell are you doing here, Darren?"

He looked down at me, his voice dangerously soft. "You haven't been home in seven years."

"That house has nothing to do with me. Not anymore. Why would I go back?"

I pushed past him, marching toward my front door. I managed to get inside, but as I tried to slam the door shut, he moved with a speed that shouldn't have been human. He shoved his hand into the closing gap.

I heard the sickening crunch of wood against bone, but he didn't even flinch. He just waited for me to recoil in shock, then pushed the door wide and stepped inside as if hed been invited.

"Are you insane?" I gasped, staring at his hand.

Four of his fingers were already beginning to swell, the skin turning a deep, angry purple where the door had crushed them. Blood began to seep from under his nails. Darren barely glanced at the injury. Instead, he just stared at me, his eyes bright with a terrifying kind of joy.

"Elena, aren't you going to ask me to sit down?"

He didn't wait for an answer. He closed the door behind him, locking us in. He followed me into the living room, his gaze sweeping over my modest furniture with a clinical, judging eye.

His eyes snagged on the entrywayspecifically, on the two pairs of matching slippers sitting on the shoe rack. The smile on his face didn't drop, but it stiffened, turning into something brittle and sharp.

"You have a boyfriend?"

"Thats none of your business."

"Why? Do I need to take care of him, too? The way I handled those boys back home?"

He tilted his head, studying me for a long time. For a fleeting second, he looked almost... hurt.

"Youre still the same, Elena," he whispered. "You always knew exactly how to make me angry, and you always did it on purpose."

He stood up, adjusting his coat, and began to walk toward me. His steps were slow and rhythmic, the sound of his shoes on the hardwood floor echoing like a countdown. I backed away, step by step, until my spine hit the cold plaster of the wall.

Darren stopped inches from me. He leaned in, his warm breath ghosting over the shell of my ear, sending a shudder of pure, primal fear down my neck.

"Come home with me, Elena," he murmured, his voice like a ghost story.

I trembled violently. I looked down at his handthe crushed onenow wrapped tightly around my wrist. His skin was freezing.

Then, the doorbell rang.

Darrens brow furrowed in annoyance, but he didn't let go. A moment later, the smart lock clicked. A man in a dark blue windbreakera detectives badge clipped to his beltstepped into the foyer.

Nate shook his umbrella out into the stand, kicked off his boots, and slid into his slippers. He walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa right next to us as if he owned the place.

"Oh, I didn't realize we had company. Sorry, El. Work ran latejust finished wrapping up a case."

He set a paper bag of takeout on the coffee table and gave Darren a pleasant, empty smile. "Elena didn't tell me we were expecting anyone. I only brought enough dinner for two."

Darrens expression smoothed into something deceptively gentle. He looked at the takeout, then at Nate, then back at me. His eyes were like deep, dark wellsthe kind you could fall into and never find the bottom of.

He stared at me for a long, quiet moment, a small, dark laugh bubbling up in his throat.

"Its fine," Darren said softly. "Its late. I shouldn't intrude. I was just leaving."

He turned to go, but as he reached for the doorknob, he paused. He looked back at Nate, his eyes sparkling with a mock-friendly light.

"By the way," Darren said, "she hates the smell of cigarettes. You should probably quit while you're ahead."

The second the door clicked shut, Nate let out a long whistle.

"So thats the 'brother' you told me about? The obsessive one?"

He made a face of pure disgust. "Being in the same room as that guy made my skin crawl. You know the only type of person that gives a cop that feeling?"

"What?" I asked, my heart still hammering against my ribs.

"Criminals. Or the ones who are just waiting for the right excuse to become one."

I let out a bitter, jagged laugh. "And what if hes both?"

Darren showed up at the Blackwood estate when he was fifteen.

He was only a few months younger than me. When my father sat him down in front of me, he only said two things: This is your brother, and Take care of him.

But my father didn't actually care what happened to Darren. To him, bringing the boy into the house was his grand act of charity, his duty fulfilled. Once the introductions were over, he went back to his boardroom and his scotch, leaving the boy to the wolves.

And the house was full of wolves. The housekeeper stole from his allowance; the staff looked through him as if he were a stain on the carpet.

I saw it, but I stayed out of it. I had my own problems.

That changed the day I found the butler punishing him. Hed locked Darren in a windowless pantry for twenty-four hours without a drop of water or a scrap of food. The reason? Darren had forgotten to feed my fathers prize canary.

It was absurd. My father had a literal team of people to care for his birds. The punishment wasn't about the bird; it was about reminding the bastard where he stood.

I went straight to my father. By the next morning, the butler was fired, and every staff member who had touched Darren was gone.

That was the first time I saw Darren smile. He looked up at me, his features softening into something beautiful and sweet.

"Thank you, Elena," hed said. His voice was like honey.

After that, he became my shadow. Even though we were in different grades, he stayed up all night for months, teaching himself the curriculum so he could skip a year and be in my classes.

At the time, I was close with Tristan, the youngest son of the Sterling family. Our fathers were already talking about a merger, a marriage. Tristan and I were a "sure thing."

Darren made sure he was always around us. He became Tristans shadow, too.

Then came winter break of our junior year. We went skiing. Tristans bindings "malfunctioned" on a black diamond run. He broke his leg so badly he had to be flown to Europe for specialized surgery. He never really walked the same way again, and the engagement talks evaporated.

My father moved on to the next candidate. Within a month, that mans family business was hit with a massive federal tax evasion scandal.

It kept happening. Every man who came near me met a disaster. People started whispering that I was cursedthe "Black Widow of the Blackwoods."

My father suspected foul play. He hired investigators, but they found nothing. Whoever was doing it was a ghost.

Years later, when I was starting to handle the family's international accounts, I took Darren with me to London for a high-stakes negotiation. The client was an arrogant prick, making demands that were borderline insulting. I was desperate to close the deal, so I stayed late, trying to play the game.

I didn't realize hed spiked my drink.

I woke up in a hospital bed with Darren sitting by my side. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week. His face was waxen, his eyes rimmed with red.

I asked about the client.

"Hes dead," Darren said. His voice was flat, as if he were telling me the weather. "An overdose. Cardiac arrest."

I started to shake. The cold realization seeped into my marrow. "What did you do, Darren?"

He leaned in so close our noses almost touched. He looked at me with an intensity that felt like a physical burn. "He touched you, Elena. Did you really think Id let him keep breathing?"

I realized then that it had always been him. Tristans "accident." The scandals. Everything.

Darren tilted his head, a dark laugh escaping him. "You're making that face again. Did you figure it out? Want to know a secret?"

I pushed him away, my voice trembling. "You're a monster. You're a freaking psychopath!"

He didn't care. He just smiled at me.

Later, I looked into the old butlerthe one whod locked him in the pantry. Three years after he was fired, hed been in a hit-and-run. He was paralyzed from the waist down.

I was going to tell my father. I was going to scream it from the rooftops. But then my father was diagnosed with leukemia. Everything became a blur of hospitals and bone marrow tests.

That was when the final bomb dropped.

The tests showed that I wasn't a match. Not even close. Because I wasn't his biological daughter.

Darren, the "bastard," was the only true heir.

My father still loved mehed raised me, after all. He asked me what I wanted as a settlement, a way to ensure my future since the inheritance was legally bound to Darren.

I looked across the hospital room at Darren. He was watching me, his eyes hooded and dark. When he saw me looking, he gave me that bright, boyish smile again.

It made my skin crawl. He was a demon wearing the skin of a brother.

I didn't want the money. I didn't want the name.

"I want to leave," I told my father. "And I want you to make sure he can never find me."

My father kept his word. For seven years, I was a ghost.

Whenever I talked to Nate about my past, I kept it vague. Even now, I don't have the words to describe what Darren is to me.

Nate, being a cop, has an annoying intuition. "Hes in love with you, isn't he?"

I bristled. "Shut up, Nate."

"Don't get mad at me. Your whole face changes when you talk about him." He flicked ash into a tray, his expression darkening. "He doesn't sound like a good guy, El. You sure he won't come looking for you?"

"He won't," I told myself. "Its been seven years. If he was going to find me, he would have done it by now."

I was wrong.

The news of Darrens return hit the social columns a week ago. An old friend from my former life reached out, half-joking: "Watch your back, Elena. The king is back, and hes still looking for his queen. Now that your father is gone, theres no one left to hold him back."

I'd been careful. I moved every year. Id only been in this town for twelve months. Not even Nates background checks could find my original file.

But Darren wasn't just anyone.

Three days after his fathers funeral, he was on my doorstep. Hed probably been tracking me for years, just waiting for the old man to die so he could break the promise of staying away.

Id called Nate the second I saw him. Nate acted like a jerk about it, complaining about the "drama," but he hadn't left my side since. He said he felt like we were being followed, but the tail was too smart, too slick.

Eventually, Nate got fed up. When he had to go out on a major raid, he practically dragged me to the station.

"Do not leave this building," he warned. "Stay in the lobby. If you even step ten feet outside, I'll cuff you to the radiator myself. Got it?"

I stayed. I waited through the afternoon and into the night as the sky turned the color of a bruise and the rain began to lash against the windows.

Eleven oclock came and went. Nate wasn't back. I called him, but it went straight to voicemail.

Lightning cracked across the sky.

I couldn't sit still. I grabbed my bag and ran toward the exit.

A junior officer, Miller, stopped me. "Elena? Nates been in an accident. The suspect led him on a high-speed chase into the outskirts. His car rolled. Theyre taking him to the ER now."

"An accident?" I whispered. No. It was too convenient.

I remembered a text Id received an hour ago from an unknown number: Stay away from the cop.

Darren.

I ran down the station steps, the rain soaking me to the bone. There was a silver Maybach idling at the curb. I didn't think. I just threw open the passenger door and dived in.

A flash of lightning illuminated the cabin.

And there he was. Behind the wheel, his face pale and ghostly in the sudden light. He was staring at me with a look that was both beautiful and utterly terrifying.