Reth

Killing is easy. Being owned is the real nightmare.

I'm controlled. Broken down and rebuilt into something lethal. I don't feel. Don't hesitate. Don't want. I survive by staying empty.

Sophia Sinclair is everything I was never meant to touch. Soft, bright… good.

For years I stayed in the shadows. Watching her. Memorizing her. Every routine. Every habit. Every detail—from the O negative in her veins to the shade of red she paints across her lips.

I convinced myself watching was harmless. Safe. Distant. But nothing I want can ever be mine when I'm leashed by an evil far worse than me.

So I did what every villain would do.

I took her.

Sophia

One moment I'm helping traumatized kids. The next I'm locked inside a house that looks exactly like my dreams with a captor who bakes my favorite pastry. Who turns up the heat when I shiver. Leaves heart-shaped candy around like it means something.

Like I mean something.

I tell myself he's a monster. But I've spent years studying broken people, and Reth Hale doesn't feel like evil. He feels like damage. And that might be worse.

When an open door offers freedom, I hesitate. I've dedicated my life to fixing wounded things—and Reth might just be the most broken of all… or the fracture that breaks me instead.

Tropes: stalker romance; obsessive anti-hero and obsessive love; captive/forced proximity; protective masked killer; he falls first (and harder); trauma-bond; broken/damaged hero; sunshine/soft heroine; slow burn.