xREDHOTREADS
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- Parts 55
Three months of unpaid rent. A routine eviction. That was supposed to be the extent of Officer Asher Gray's Tuesday morning. But when he forced his way into the dilapidated apartment, he didn't find a deadbeat tenant. He found a nightmare.
Hidden behind a door was Aria-broken, bound, and trembling under the psychological ghost of a man who called himself "Matthew." For three years, she lived in a hell of Logan's making, a world where her body was currency and her voice was a liability. Now that Logan has vanished into the shadows, Aria is physically free, but her mind remains a prisoner. She is a ghost in a hospital gown, refusing to utter a single word to the doctors, the counselors, or the world that failed her.
The only person she doesn't shrink away from is Asher. He's the one who cut the ropes; he's the one who stood between her and the darkness. When the Chief realizes that Asher is the only anchor keeping Aria from drifting away entirely, he makes an unorthodox-and dangerous-request: Asher needs to take her in.
Asher Gray is a man of protocols and boundaries, and bringing a traumatized witness into his home breaks every one of them. He's annoyed, overwhelmed, and certain he's the wrong man for the job. But as the days turn into weeks, the silence in his house begins to change. Through the flicker of her hands and the tentative trust in her eyes, Aria starts to emerge from the wreckage.
Asher intended to just keep her safe until the trial, but he soon realizes that the closer she gets to healing, the harder it becomes to imagine his life without her quiet presence. In the process of saving Aria, Asher might just find that he was the one who was truly lost.