All Chapters of Breed Me Raw, Daddy: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

100 Chapters

Chapter 91

The day I went back to Lisbon started with coffee in the penthouse kitchen and the quiet weight of goodbye sitting between us like a third person.Aiden had been awake before me. I found him at the island already dressed in dark jeans and a black sweater, two mugs waiting. The thinner collar sat on the counter beside my keys, I had taken it off to shower and hadn’t put it back on yet. He glanced at it once, then at me, and didn’t comment. Another small mercy. Another piece of progress.“Flight’s at two,” I said, wrapping my hands around the warm mug.“I know.” His voice was steady, but his eyes were not. “Security will take you to the private terminal. I’ve cleared the next three weeks as much as possible so I can be available when you call. No pressure. Just… available.”I nodded. The old script would have included a list of expectations, check-in times, reminders of who I belonged to while I was gone. This version was quieter. Harder for him. More valuable to me.We didn’t fill the

Chapter 92

The first full week back in New York after Lisbon settled into something that almost resembled peace.Almost.I woke most mornings in the penthouse, the thin collar either on or off depending on what the day needed from me. Some nights I still went to the studio apartment. Aiden no longer treated those absences like small abandonments. He kissed me at the door, told me to text when I arrived, and let me go. The first time he managed it without that pinched look around his eyes, I felt something in my chest loosen that had been tight for months.We were learning.On Tuesday I spent the entire day in the studio apartment working on final selects for the exhibition. The converted warehouse space Aiden had quietly reserved was perfect, high ceilings, north light, enough wall space to let the work breathe. I hung test prints with a borrowed ladder and sat on the floor staring at them until the light changed. For once the silence didn’t feel like loneliness. It felt like ownership.I called

Chapter 93

The warehouse smelled like dust and possibility the first morning we walked through it together.Aiden had kept his word. He arrived as my partner, not my patron. No entourage. No quiet signals to the building manager that the man with the checkbook was in the room. Just him in a dark coat, hands in his pockets, watching me the way he used to watch acquisition targets—except the intensity was softer now, aimed at understanding instead of owning.“Talk me through it,” he said.So I did.I walked him through the sequence I had built over the last week. Thresholds. Leaving and returning. The long corridor of images that began with the closed-off, claustrophobic frames from the early penthouse months and opened slowly into the wider, breathable light of Lisbon and the New York streets I had reclaimed. I told him where I wanted the viewer to feel tight in the chest and where I wanted them to exhale. He listened without interrupting, eyes moving between the empty walls and my face.When I f

Chapter 94

The second day in the warehouse felt less like a performance and more like work.Real work.I arrived before Aiden, coffee in one hand and a roll of test prints under my arm. The installer had already marked the main sightlines on the floor in blue tape. Standing alone in the big empty space, listening to the faint traffic noise filter through the high windows, I felt the familiar mix of terror and rightness that always came when a project started to become real. This one carried extra weight. It wasn’t just my work on the walls. It was the first thing Aiden and I had built together without one of us disappearing into the other’s gravity.He showed up twenty minutes later carrying a second coffee and a small paper bag.“You forgot to eat,” he said, handing both over. Not an accusation. Just a fact delivered without ownership.Inside the bag was a still-warm croissant and an egg sandwich from the place near my studio apartment. He had remembered the exact order I defaulted to when I wa

Chapter 95

By the middle of the week the warehouse had started to feel like a second home.I arrived early again, the thin collar in my pocket instead of around my throat. The installer had finished the main hanging system overnight. Standing in the middle of the big room with the morning light cutting across the concrete, I felt the familiar low-grade panic that always came when a show moved from theory into irreversible fact. This time the panic was quieter. Manageable. I had help that didn’t try to take the wheel.Aiden showed up forty minutes later with coffee and a quiet expression that said he’d already been awake for hours. He handed me the cup, brushed a quick kiss against my temple, and then stepped back to let me own the space.“Sleep okay?” he asked.“Enough. You?”“Therapy ran long. Then I couldn’t turn my brain off.” He glanced around the room. “It’s looking real.”“Too real.”We got to work.The morning became a long, granular push through the remaining decisions. Wall text. Exact

Chapter 96: Neutral Ground

The gallery smelled like fresh paint and dust and the sharp chemical tang of new frames.I stood in the middle of the main room with my arms crossed, watching two technicians carefully lift the largest print onto the wall. The image was one of the newer ones, low light, a narrow alley in the financial district just after rain, the wet pavement throwing back fractured reflections of neon. Aiden had chosen the placement without saying much. He’d simply stood beside me three days ago, looked at the wall, and said, “Center. Let it breathe.”He was right. It looked better than anything I’d imagined.Aiden was across the room now, speaking quietly with the gallery director. He wore a black sweater and dark jeans instead of a suit. No tie. No cufflinks. Just the heavy platinum chain at his throat that he’d started wearing again after the renegotiation, simple, understated, impossible to miss if you knew what it meant. He kept his hands in his pockets and his voice low. He didn’t interrupt th

Chapter 97: Final Adjustments

The last two framed prints arrived at nine in the morning, still wrapped in brown paper and corner protectors. I signed for them in the gallery’s back room while the director hovered, already talking about press timing and the final walkthrough scheduled for the afternoon. Aiden had texted an hour earlier: On site by ten. Stay in your process. I’ll handle the logistics.He meant it.By the time he walked in, I was already on a ladder adjusting the height of a smaller piece on the west wall. He didn’t call up to me. He simply set his coffee on the reception desk, spoke briefly to the director, and then stayed out of the way while I worked. When I finally climbed down, he was standing in front of the large center print with his hands in his pockets, studying it the way he studied market movements—quiet, absolute focus.“It’s finished,” I said.He turned. The look he gave me was steady. “Almost. The interview is at eleven. They want both of us on camera for the final segment. You can say

Chapter 98 – Nine Days Out

Nine days.I stood in the center of the main gallery after the final walkthrough and let the number sit in my chest. The walls were finished. The lighting was locked. The sequence held. Every print hung exactly where it was supposed to, and for the first time since the project began I could look at the whole thing without wanting to change a single frame.It was done.Aiden waited near the entrance, speaking quietly with the director about opening-night staffing. He glanced over once, caught my eye, and gave the smallest nod, acknowledgment without intrusion. Then he turned back to the conversation and left me the space.I walked the rooms one last time alone. The large center image still pulled the eye the way we’d planned. The east wall breathed. The west wall kept its quiet rhythm. My name would be on the wall next to the entrance in nine days. The thought still felt slightly unreal.We locked up just after four. The interview from two days earlier had aired that morning on the nat

Chapter 99 – Opening Night

The gallery doors opened at seven.I stood just inside the entrance in the dark clothes Aiden had quietly approved that afternoon, simple, clean lines, nothing that asked for attention, and watched the first wave of people move through the space. Collectors. Critics. A few faces I recognized from the old freelance circuit. The large center print caught the light exactly the way we’d planned. Conversations started low and then rose as people drifted from wall to wall.It was happening.Aiden stayed near the edge of the room for the first hour, speaking only when spoken to, never hovering. Every so often his eyes found mine across the crowd, brief, steady, checking in without pulling focus. The new rules held even here. This night belonged to the work.By eight-thirty the main room was full. I heard my name more times in one evening than I had in the previous two years. A curator from a mid-size museum asked thoughtful questions about the alley series. A collector I only knew by reputat

Chapter 100 : First Strike

The first message arrived at 6:17 a.m.I was still half-asleep in Aiden’s bed, the sheets twisted around my legs, the low city light just beginning to push through the penthouse windows. My phone buzzed once on the nightstand. Then again. Then it didn’t stop.I reached for it without thinking.The subject line was clinical: Regarding recent gallery representation and funding sources.The body was worse.A mid-tier arts blog with just enough reach to matter had published a piece overnight. It didn’t accuse outright. It simply asked questions in the careful language of people who wanted deniability. Why had a struggling freelance photographer suddenly received full funding and a high-profile solo show from one of the city’s most aggressive corporate raiders? Was the work the real product, or the access? There were screenshots of old social media posts of mine from years earlier, blurry party photos, a couple of poorly worded captions taken out of context—lined up next to images of Aiden

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