BOUND TO HIM (Book II: Captured series)

33. Logan

The room went completely, suffocatingly still.

I didn't yell. I didn't punch the wall or tear the room apart, though every instinct I had demanded a war. I just stared at her as the raw, ugly truth settled between us—Wyatt, the ruthless leverage, the forced signature on a divorce contract she never wanted to sign. The knowledge that while I was bleeding out on a backstreet, my own blood was putting a knife to my wife's throat.

The white-hot rage inside me didn't burn; it crystallized into something cold, lethal, and absolute. But underneath the anger, a sickening hollow ache opened in my chest.

"Did he touch you?" I asked, my voice flat, stripped of every trace of warmth.

Elle looked down at her lap, her pale knuckles digging into the hospital blanket, hiding her hands from me. "No," she whispered.

A heavy, suffocating pause stretched between us, filled only by the rhythmic, sterile hum of the vitals monitor.

"Did he threaten you?"

"No." Her voice was barely a breath, fragile as spun glass.

I shifted closer, cupping her face in my hand. My skin was rough against hers, but I tried to be as gentle as a man built for violence could manage. My thumb gently traced the curve of her cheek, brushing away a dry tear stain until she had no choice but to look at me. "Did he make you believe you had no other choice?"

That was the line that broke her. Her breath hitched on a soft sob, fresh tears welling in her exhausted eyes, and she gave a single, devastating nod.

The guilt hit me like a physical blow, heavy and suffocating. I should have been there. I should have protected her.

I leaned down, pressing a slow, lingering kiss to her forehead, inhaling the faint, sweet scent of her skin underneath the sharp hospital bleach. I didn't make threats. I didn't give a grand speech.

"Okay," I murmured against her skin, feeling the delicate tremble of her frame. "I'll fix it."

The week after I brought her home passed in a blur of quiet, fragile routines.

The house felt too large, too quiet. The silence was heavy with the ghost of a future we'd never even had the chance to name. I carried my own quiet grief like lead in my stomach, but every time I looked at Elle, my own pain took a back seat to keeping her whole.

While Elle slept, wrapped in the heavy warmth of our blankets, I hunted signatures in the cold daylight, tracking down every scrap of paper Wyatt had used to trap her.

While I coaxed her into eating just half a plate of fluffy, salted eggs I'd cooked myself—standing over our kitchen stove in the silence of dawn, trying to remember how she liked them—Elon questioned another witness in the shadows.

When her body was still too weak and aching from the physical toll of the loss, I carried her into the steam-filled bathroom. I sat her on the bench, stripped down to my jeans, and stepped into the stall with her. Under the warm spray of the shower, I held her weight against me. My broad hands looked huge and clumsy against her pale skin, but I was as careful as if I were holding glass. I gently worked the lavender shampoo into her long hair with my calloused fingers, rinsing it slowly while she rested her forehead against my sternum and just breathed.

Every time she winced from a dull cramp, a sharp blade turned in my own gut. I had failed to protect her from Costello, from Wyatt, and from the body's cruel betrayals.

I tracked her pain medication by the minute on a folded scrap of paper in my pocket, filling a small glass of water before she even had to ask. I spent half the night awake in the dark armchair beside our bed, the shadows wrapping around me. I watched the shallow, uneven rise and fall of her shoulders, my chest aching with a raw, protective agony. I waited for the inevitable nightmares so I could pull her into my arms the second she woke up gasping for air.

When the grief over what we'd lost hit her in middle-of-the-night waves, I offered no hollow platitudes. I had no comforting words—I was just as lost, just as broken by the loss of the child I'd never known I wanted until it was gone. So I just held her tight, pressing my face into the crook of her neck, silently rubbing slow, steady circles into the small of her back until her sobs quieted into exhausted sleep, leaving me awake in the dark with my own silent tears.

Wyatt thought he was building an empire on our pain. He didn't realize he was just waiting for me to clean up the mess.

The confrontation was quick, surgical, and silent.

I walked into Wyatt's office unannounced, throwing no doors open, making no grand entrance. I didn't drag him across the room or draw a gun, though every dark piece of my soul screamed to do it.

I simply tossed a single brown folder onto his glass desk.

Wyatt leaned back in his leather chair, a smug, dismissive laugh escaping his lips as he glanced down at the documents inside. "What's this, Logan? A list of grievances?"

"Your father already has the originals," I said simply.

The smirk died on his face like a flame snuffed by cold water. The color drained from his skin so fast it was almost poetic. The panic set in—sharp, immediate, and raw—as he realized the financial leverage and legal threats he thought he held over my life had just evaporated into ash.

I leaned across the desk, placing my hands flat on the glass, lowering my face to his, keeping my voice dangerously, terrifyingly low.

"You thought you owned my wife."

I paused, letting the heavy, suffocating silence crush whatever was left of his arrogance.

"The only thing you've ever owned... was borrowed."

I turned and walked out before he could even find his voice.

I came home as the sun was setting, casting long, golden shadows across the hallway floor.

I didn't feel victorious. I didn't feel relieved. The rage was gone, leaving only a vast, hollow emptiness. Revenge didn't fix grief. It didn't fill the cold, quiet ache in our hearts, and it didn't bring back the future we lost in that hospital room.

I walked upstairs, pushing our bedroom door open without a sound. Elle was asleep, curled on her side in the middle of our massive bed, looking small and precious. The small white medicine bottle sat on the nightstand right where I'd left it next to her half-empty water glass.

I quietly kicked off my boots, shed my heavy coat, and slipped into the cool sheets beside her.

She stirred slightly at the shift in weight. Half-asleep, completely unprompted by conscious thought, she instinctively reached across the mattress for me. Her small, warm hand slid over my shirt, fingers clutching the fabric over my chest, anchoring herself to my heartbeat.

That tiny, effortless action destroyed me more than any war ever could. It broke down every hard edge I had left.

"You're back," she whispered into the dark, her voice thick and gravelly with sleep.

I pulled her closer, burying my face in the soft crook of her neck, inhaling the warmth of her skin as I pressed a kiss to her temple, letting my tears finally fall silently into her hair.

"Always."