You're mine... and mine alone

Dahlia

The headlights cut through the pitch-black darkness and blinding sheets of rain, illuminating the low, jagged granite wall and the vast, endless abyss waiting beyond it.

Instinct took over before my brain could fully process the sheer terror of the moment. My feet abandoned the useless brake pedal, and my right hand slammed down onto the center console, wrapping around the emergency handbrake lever. I yanked it upward with everything I had.

The mechanical cable snapped taut. The rear tires locked instantly, shrieking in violent protest against the wet, slick pavement. The heavy sedan snapped sideways, entering a sickening, uncontrollable fishtail at fifty miles an hour.

The entire world turned into a dizzying, terrifying blur of blinding rain, dark looming pine trees, and flashing yellow emergency lights. The tire smoke filled the wheel wells with an acrid stench that leaked into the cabin. I threw my arms over my face, tucking my head down against the steering wheel as the passenger side of the car slammed into the low granite barrier with a deafening, metal-crunching screech that echoed violently out over the valley below.

Sparks exploded across the darkness outside my window like dying stars. The impact tore the passenger mirror clean off and crumpled the side door, but the barrier held long enough to absorb the worst of the momentum.

The sedan spun twice, momentum carrying the battered frame off the tarmac entirely. The tires lost all traction on the muddy shoulder, and the car slid sideways down a steep incline, crashing through thick underbrush before dropping into a deep, flooded ditch at the base of the slope.

The vehicle came to a sudden, violent halt that slammed my body violently forward against the seatbelt restraint, knocking every last drop of air straight out of my lungs.

Silence descended, broken only by the hiss of steam, the heavy thrum of my own frantic heartbeat, and the relentless pounding of rain against the roof.

The engine sputtered twice and died completely. Thick grey smoke curled out from beneath the crumpled hood, mixing with the cold fog rolling in from the woods.

I lay slumped over the wheel for several seconds, my vision swimming with black spots as I fought to draw breath into my bruised chest. Pain radiated along my collarbone where the strap had caught me, but nothing felt broken. My hands were trembling uncontrollably as I reached down, fumbled with the jammed release clip, and finally freed myself from the belt.

My first thought wasn't my safety—it was the file.

I reached across the console into the shadows of the floorboard, my desperate fingers searching until they brushed against the wet cardboard of the folder. It had survived the crash. I pulled it close, clutching it tightly to my stomach, and shoved the dented driver’s side door open with my shoulder.

The icy night air and biting rain hit my face instantly, washing away the heat of pure terror and the stench of burnt rubber. I dragged my legs out of the car, my boots sinking ankle-deep into the freezing mud of the ditch.

Before I could haul myself up the muddy embankment toward the road, blinding high beams cut through the rain from above.

A heavy black SUV pulled onto the gravel shoulder at a frantic speed, its tires kicking up a shower of rocks and mud. The vehicle hadn't even come to a complete stop before the driver's door was thrown open, slamming back against the frame. Heavy, urgent footsteps crunched over the wet gravel, moving toward the edge of the incline.

"Dahlia!"

Rafe was down the muddy slope in seconds. He hadn't bothered with a coat; his white dress shirt was completely soaked through, clinging to his broad chest and shoulders like a second skin as he dropped directly onto his knees in the deep, filthy mud beside my open car door.

His cold, wet hands came up instantly to frame my face, his long fingers shaking with a rare, desperate urgency I had never once seen in him—not in his office, not in his house, not anywhere.

"Are you hit? Look at me, Dahlia. Look at me!" he demanded, his voice raw and harsh against the sound of the storm.

"I'm... I'm fine," I rasped, my voice cracking with exhaustion. The sheer relief of seeing him, combined with the lingering shock of the crash, made me lean my forehead against his wet chest for a single, involuntary second, my heart hammering like a trapped bird against my ribs.

"The brakes... Rafe, the brakes went completely flat. There was nothing... I couldn't stop it."

I expected anger. I expected him to curse, to look up at the road, or to examine the wrecked sedan with furious disbelief.

Instead, Rafe went dead silent.

That dark, terrifying stillness settled over him once again—the exact same icy, lethal composure he had worn in the study when he saw the threat in my bag. His breathing didn't even accelerate. His hands remained firmly cupped around my face, wiping away the rain and mud from my temples with a gentle, terrifying precision.

Without saying a word, he slid his broad arms beneath my knees and lower back, lifting me effortlessly out of the wrecked car and holding me tight against his wet chest as he began to trek back up the slick, muddy slope toward his SUV.

"Rafe," I whispered, holding the file tight between us, pulling back slightly to look into his face as the icy rain poured over us both. "You aren't surprised."

His storm eyes met mine... unblinking, dark, and utterly unreadable under the dim halogen lights of his idling SUV.

He reached the top of the embankment, opened the passenger door of his vehicle, and set me down gently onto the warm leather seat. But he didn't step back. He leaned into the open doorway, resting one hand on the roof of the frame and the other on the back of my seat, trapping me completely within his shadow.

"I knew someone tampered with the brake fluid line in the garage three hours ago," he said softly, his voice dangerously level.

A cold, suffocating knot tightened in my throat. Raw shock, betrayal, and rising terror tore through me all at once, wiping away whatever faint relief I had felt moments before.

"You knew?" I breathed, horror creeping into every single word. "You handed me those keys... you told me to drive out that gate... knowing the brakes were cut?!"

"I had my security team alter the secondary emergency valve so the fluid would slowly bleed out rather than cut instantly," Rafe purred, his voice dropping into that smooth, terrifyingly intimate register. He leaned closer, his long, warm fingers lightly brushing a wet strand of hair away from my cold cheek with a possessive, unsettling gentleness. "I ensured the car would lose pressure on the incline so it would drift into the dirt ditch instead of going over the cliff edge."

"You used me as bait again!" I screamed, shoving his hand away from my face. "You let me crash a car into a stone wall!"

"I needed whoever cut those lines to believe they'd succeeded, Dahlia," Rafe corrected softly, completely unfazed by my outburst. "I needed them to watch you drive off, think you were dead in the valley, and step out into the open to celebrate. If I kept you locked in a room, they would have stayed hidden in the shadows forever."

I stared at him, my blood turning to pure ice in my veins as I looked into the eyes of the man leaning over me.

Is he keeping me safe? I thought, my chest heaving as I clutched my father's stolen file against my ribs. Or is he just controlling every breath I take, orchestrating every nightmare I survive, until there's nothing left of me that doesn't belong to him?

"Unbelievanle. You're insane," I rasped, pulling as far back into the passenger seat as the leather would allow, flinching away from his proximity. "You're a monster, Rafe."

Rafe didn't look offended. A slow, faint, lethal smile touched the corner of his lips as he leaned down further, his warm breath fanning across my cold ear, sending a dark, dangerous shiver straight down my spine.

"Maybe, sweetheart," he murmured, his voice dripping with dark, undeniable affection. "But you're still breathing. And now that the world thinks Cyran Mercer's daughter is dead at the bottom of a ravine..." He reached out, his thumb lightly tracing the line of my trembling bottom lip. "...you belong to me more than ever."