•006

Ryder POV

I watch the security feed for the third time tonight, the glow of the monitor casting harsh shadows across my penthouse office. Mia Thompson is on her knees outside Room 417 at St. Mercy Hospital, forehead pressed to the cold tile floor, shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

The timestamp reads 4:12 a.m. Her phone lies beside her like a discarded weapon, the screen still lit with my last message.

I zoom in. Even through the grainy hospital camera, I can see the exhaustion etched into her face—the same face that once looked up at me in the Lakewood High hallway with tears streaming while I laughed. Five years later, and she’s still breaking because of me.

My chest tightens. I reach for the glass of whiskey on the desk, but my hand stops halfway. This isn’t victory. This is something uglier. Something I’ve been feeding for years.

I knew about her mother’s cancer before I even scheduled that interview. Of course I did.

The private investigation firm I’ve kept on retainer since Mia left town delivered monthly reports like clockwork. Financial strain. Medical bills piling up.

The diagnosis that hit six months after they fled Lakewood. I told myself I was just monitoring the aftermath of my destruction. Making sure the girl whose diary I’d publicly eviscerated hadn’t ended up in a ditch somewhere.

But that was a lie I told the mirror every morning.

I wanted her back. Needed her back. The one person who had ever seen something in me worth fantasizing about, even if it was twisted and pathetic in her seventeen-year-old handwriting.

So when the reports showed her mother’s condition worsening—aggressive recurrence, experimental trial denied by insurance—I saw the opening. Triple salary. “No strings.” A hero’s offer wrapped in corporate benevolence.

Now the real poison is dripping out.

I pull up the encrypted medical file the investigator slipped me last week. Her mother’s symptoms started with crippling anxiety and insomnia right after the move. Stress-induced immune suppression, the early notes said.

The kind of trauma that can accelerate genetic vulnerabilities. The kind of trauma *I* inflicted when I read Mia’s private fantasies aloud in front of the entire school, when I made her drop to her knees gathering scattered diary pages while the hallway laughed.

I might as well have handed her mother the cancer diagnosis myself.

“Goddamn it,” I growl, slamming the laptop shut only to open it again seconds later. The feed shows a nurse helping Mia to her feet. She looks so small. So destroyed. Just like that day on the ice when I first shattered her.

My phone buzzes. It’s my head of security, Marcus.

“Boss, you asked for updates on the Thompson situation. The mother’s vitals dropped again at 2 a.m. They’re talking about moving her to palliative if the new trial doesn’t start soon. You want me to make the call to the foundation board?”

I hesitate. My family’s foundation has been quietly funding research into this exact strain of cancer ever since my father died from it two years ago. I could get her mother into the trial by morning. One signature from me and the doors open. But doing it now, before Mia signs, would expose everything.

“Do it quietly,” I say, voice low. “Make it look like a standard approval. No names connected to me. And Marcus… if she finds out I’ve been watching her this whole time—”

“I know. Containment protocol. But boss, this is getting messy. You’re crossing lines even for you.”

I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “Lines? I obliterated lines the day I announced to the whole arena that Mia Thompson was a virgin writing smut about me. This is just the long game.”

He sighs and hangs up. I stand and pace the length of the office, the city sprawled beneath me like it belongs to me. At twenty-three, I’ve built Vaughn Enterprises into a beast—tech, entertainment, medical research investments that give me god-like pull. All of it started as a way to become untouchable. To never be the powerless kid again. But every empire I’ve conquered feels empty knowing Mia spent the last five years hating me across the country.

I open the hidden folder. Scanned pages of her old notebook. Thirty-seven mentions of my name. Detailed fantasies that once made me hard and furious at the same time. I read one at random:

*“His hands are rough but I think he’d be careful with me at first. Like he actually cares under all the cruelty.”*

I slam the laptop again. She was wrong then, and she’s wrong now. I don’t know how to be careful. I only know how to ruin things so thoroughly they can never leave me.

The conflict claws at me harder than ever. Part of me—the monster who laughed while she cried—wants to drag her back broken and dependent.

The other part, the one that sat outside her house that night five years ago with genuine regret, wants to save her mother and somehow earn forgiveness. Both parts are selfish. Both want her chained to me.

My phone lights up with a new hospital alert from my contact there. Her mother’s condition is deteriorating faster than expected. Possible organ stress. They’re recommending family be called in for difficult conversations.

I type the message before reason catches up.

**Ryder:** *The contract has been updated. Your mother’s trial spot is secured the second you sign. No strings on paper. But we both know there will be. Come in at 8 a.m. Don’t make me come get you.*

I hit send and immediately regret the last line. Too threatening. Too much like the old Ryder. But I can’t stop. The obsession runs too deep.

Minutes crawl by. I check the feed obsessively. Mia is back in the room now, holding her mother’s hand. The older woman looks frail, skin almost translucent under the harsh lights. I zoom in on Mia’s face—red-rimmed eyes, trembling lips. She whispers something I can’t hear, but I can guess. "I’m sorry. I’ll fix this."

Because of me, she has to beg the devil for help.

Another buzz. Jax again, the idiot still up partying somewhere.

Jax: "Bro you really hiring Virgin Mia? She still hot? Team wants to know if you’re finally collecting on that old diary bet."

I nearly throw the phone. The old bet. The one my teammates made after the hallway incident—how long it would take me to actually fuck the “creepy virgin” who wrote about me. I shut that shit down back then, but the rumor lived on. Now it feels like acid in my veins. They have no idea what this is. No one does.

I reply coldly: "Stay the fuck out of it."

At 5:03 a.m., her message finally comes through.

Mia: I’ll be there at 8. But this doesn’t mean I forgive you. This doesn’t mean anything."

Relief floods me, followed immediately by darker hunger. She’s coming.

She’s walking back into my world voluntarily, even if it’s coated in desperation. I lean forward, elbows on the desk, staring at her image on the feed.

It means everything, Mia-Mia.

It means I get to watch you every day. It means I get to test how much you still want the monster who broke you. It means when your mother improves because of my money—money I’ll make sure you never trace back to me—you’ll be tied to me by gratitude and resentment in equal measure.

But the biggest conflict is already brewing in my gut. What happens when the truth comes out? Not just the watching.

Not just the possible link between my bullying and her mother’s illness. There’s more. The foundation records show her mother was briefly in a support group connected to my father’s case years ago. Small world. Dangerous world.

If Mia connects those dots, she won’t just hate me. She’ll try to destroy everything I’ve built.

I pour another drink and raise it toward the screen.

“To new beginnings,” I muttered. “And to the girl who’s about to learn that running from me was never an option.”

The sun is starting to rise over the city as I watch her finally fall asleep in the chair beside her mother’s bed, still clutching that phone. My phone. My future.

By 8 a.m., she’ll be in my building. In my control.

And this time, the game won’t end with tears in a hallway.

It will end with her completely mine—body, soul, and all the broken pieces I created.