It’s amazing how drunk you can get within a few hours when you really set your mind to it. I tell that to the fourth—or was this the fifth?—empty glass of whiskey in my hand, and then I pour myself another.

I can’t stop picturing it. The night the police came to tell us Mom was gone. The note they showed us. The apology she penned, painstakingly, before she stepped off that bridge and crashed into the river that night.

And then I remember the other night. The night I snuck down to the kitchen, hearing shouting. There was a letter on the table, addressed to my father, but Betsy, our cook, opened it instead. Because she’d seen the name on the return address. She was ranting, throwing pots around, screaming “How dare he!”

My father finally came, tried to calm her down. I hid in the pantry and listened as Betsy explained. Mom and Betsy had been friends, closer than any of the other staff. Mom confided in Betsy a couple of nights before she died. Told her who attacked her, and how. Gave her all the gory details, which Betsy told my father, and I listened too, shaking, hidden in that cupboard.

“And now he has the nerve to send this,” Betsy spat, thrusting the card at my father. “Calvin fucking Badiary sent you a condolence card and a check for one thousand dollars. As if that compensate for her life. As if that would make up for his savagery.”

Dad wasn’t the same after that. He didn’t talk, not to Betsy, not to the staff, not to me, not to anyone. His business partners came by the house time and again, concerned, but we had to turn them away.

After he died, I found a journal in his drawer. He started it the night after that conversation with Betsy. Rambled about his many regrets. Memories of the years he worked hand-in-hand with Calvin, never suspecting what the man was really like. Notes about the times he should’ve realized something was wrong, like the Christmas party he brought Mom to, where Calvin called her a shooting star. Toward the end of the journal, the memories gave way to mad plans instead—notes on revenge, schemes my father never had time to put into place. He died before he could carry any of them out.

But me? I was still alive.

Revenge would be mine. Our revenge, on behalf of my entire family, since I’m the only one of us left.

I decided right from the start that killing Calvin wouldn’t be enough. He thought he could send money for my mother like she was his whore? He thought he could take anyone and anything he wanted, and never pay the price?

I needed to make him suffer the way I’ve suffered. Emotionally ruin him.

I started following Pamona, knowing she was his closest family, the only one he truly cared about in the world. That night in the alley, I thought about letting those other men do the job. Attack her the way he attacked my mother.

But I couldn’t bring myself to do what he did. I couldn’t stoop to that level. I rescued her, and that night, the way that she gazed at me when I saved her from those men, I came up with a new plan.

I would make her mine.

Take her, make her addicted to me, and leave her broken-hearted. I knew she was a virgin, innocent and sheltered. I knew I could make her want me, love me, need me.

I just never expected that need to cut both ways.

I laugh and chug the rest of the whiskey in the bottle, only a few swallows, but enough to burn the whole way down. How much of this did I kill off in just the last few hours since the shower?

Fuck it.

I laugh again and toss the bottle at the wall. Grin as it shatters into a million pieces.

Just like all of my plans.

I can’t go through with that video. I can’t pull the trigger; can’t break her the way I need to in order to make this work. And knowing Pamona now, I’m sure she would never agree to it anyway.

Fucking hell.

What did I do?

There’s a knock at the door, and I snarl, “Go away.”

“Farrow?”

I clench my jaw. Pamona.

I don’t say anything else. I don’t tell her to come in. I don’t tell her to leave either.

The door creaks open slowly. Pamona sidles inside. Takes a glance at me, the bottle shattered against the wall, the glass in my hand. She crosses the room and plucks the glass from my limp fingers. Sets it on the desk beside me, then crouches in front of me, eyes on mine.

There’s pity in her gaze. That’s one thing I cannot stand.

I surge to my feet and pull her up with me. Wrap my hands around her shoulders, not tight enough to hurt. Just enough to hold her here. Make her see what she did.

“You’ve ruined everything,” I say, my voice low and even and surprisingly steady. “Everything I spent the last five years working for. My life’s goal. Ruined.”

“Farrow, you’ve had too much to drink. You don’t know what you’re saying…”

“That night, five years ago. The night in the alley.”

“I remember.” She cups my cheek, catches my eye with a gaze so sincere and steady that it actually hurts to look at her. My chest hurts.

“That was the start of my path to failure. I thought it was the start of this plan, my way to revenge, but…” I shake my head. Rest my forehead against hers. “It wasn’t. It was the start of my path to…”

“To what?” Her voice is a whisper between us.

“To you. To these feelings I can’t control. To loving you even though I don’t want to,” I admit. Something tugs inside me and I can’t resist anymore. I pull her against me and kiss her, slow and steady.

It feels different than before. This is a kiss without an agenda. Without a plan or a hidden plot. Without thinking about my past or her father’s future, the demise I want to plan for him.

This is just me: a man, kissing her, a woman. The woman whose virginity I took. The woman who spent the last month caring for me, even as I tried to ruin her.

The woman I’m falling for.

This is love, and it hurts worse than anything.

Pamona kisses me back, softly, gently, like she’s afraid I’ll break. And maybe I will. When we finally pull apart, she rests her forehead against mine and smiles at me. “Thank you, Farrow,” she whispers.

She doesn’t say she loves me too. Another cut, another blow.

I laugh softly. Because of course she doesn’t.

How could she love me? I kidnapped her. I tried to destroy her.

But she’s tugging on my hand, drawing me toward the bed, and I don’t want to think too hard about that. About how we wound up here and what I did to get her here.

She wants one last time with me before I have to let her go. I’m going to forget about the future. Live in this moment because I already know it will be our last time together.

We fall onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and lips and teeth. She bites my lip, and I groan softly. Tug free and kiss my way along her neck, her collarbone, her chest. I pull her shirt off and unclasp her bra. Kiss along her breasts, one at a time, and suck her nipples into my mouth, first one, then the next, circling my tongue against them until her nipples harden.

I cannot get enough of her smooth skin, her perfect body. She is gorgeous, perfect, untouched… And knowing that I was the first man to have her is hotter than I could have imagined.

I slide my way back up her body as she tugs my shirt off, and I let her explore me, her hands tracing my muscles as I kiss her soft, supple mouth, her long, graceful neck. I sink my hands into her hair and pin her against me, loving the way her curves meld against my body, her chest heaving against mine. I kiss her neck, sink my teeth into the sensitive spot below her ear, and savor her faint gasp, the way she clenches her arms around me, holds me closer. Her mouth feathers along my neck, hesitant, tentative, and yet so much more confidant than she was when we first started to have sex just a couple of weeks ago.

I told her she was a fast learner, and she really is.

When I finally pull off her jeans and spread her legs, I can’t help sliding down to taste her pussy once more. The glorious, semi-sweet flavor, the way she pants and gasps as I work her with my tongue… I will never get tired of this. Feeling her give in to me, her resistance collapsing.

When she’s wet and quivering, I part her legs, loving the way she immediately wraps them around my waist, drawing me to her hungrily. I have to stop her before we get too close. I reach into my pocket for a condom. I slip it onto my cock right before I plunge into her, her tight pussy contracting around me. It’s all I can do not to lose it then and there.

I want to fuck her forever.

I want to make love to her forever. I want to never have to let her go.

I know I will, soon, and it only makes pull her closer to me. Kiss her harder, fiercely. Her mouth works against mine just as desperately, and her hips arch up in time with my thrusts when I start to move.

Her hands grip my back, my ass, her nails digging in hard enough to mark me. I’m probably leaving bruises on her ass as I thrust into her, slamming deep inside every time, my balls slapping against her. Neither of us cares. We want to leave marks. We want the other one to be stuck with the memory of us, long after tonight.

I already know I will be.

We finish at the same time, Pamona arching into me and groaning, her body quivering as she climaxes. I finish with a shout, calling her name, and she kisses me hard before I even finish, bucking her hips beneath me, clenching her pussy tight around my cock as though she wants to milk every last drop from me.

For a long time after we finish, I just lie against her chest, both of us covered in sweat, the scent of sex flooding the room around us. She holds me there, hands running through my hair, and neither of us needs to speak to know what we’re both thinking about.

She’s about to leave.