Before Kael could wake up, I cleaned up.
I'd learned from my mistakes.
Cain's death also taught me to never leave evidence.
Never give them a thread to pull. So I wiped everything clean. His apartment looked untouched, pristine, like I'd never been there at all. No fingerprints. No trace of Sarah Brown except the chemical fog in his bloodstream and the gaps in his memory.
The goal was simple, really.
I didn't assault Kael to show Aria. That would be crude. Inefficient. No, I did it to control him.
Because I'd been watching Kael Roman for months now, studying him like a lab specimen, and I'd witnessed something remarkable: Aria had stripped him bare. The sabertoothed tiger that stormed through XE Corp almost a year ago, all violence and cold precision, was gone. In his place?
A weak man in a strong suit. A lovesick fool who'd rather die than lose her.
