Franco waited in the doorway, watching me come apart. I couldn’t see straight, my heart was a f**king rabbit in my chest, and my body felt like it would never calm down.

I held Tess’s hand as she slipped away into sleep, and I wanted to throw the heart I’d cut from the ringleader into the fire and watch it f**king burn.

“Move away from my patient. I want this room to myself while I work,” the doctor said, pushing me aside.

“No f**king chance. I’m staying right here.” I crossed my arms, daring him to argue. The rage inside was ready to smash him if he tried to separate me from Tess again. We scowled at each other before his eyes dropped to my bloody clothes.

“It’s not sanitary for you to be near while I operate. Go have a shower and come back. Your maid can keep watch.”

Suzette blinked, coming out of her shock at the state of Tess. I didn’t blame her for looking like a ghost—Tess was no longer recognisable. Her golden hair lay dank against the pillow in clumps. Her collarbone pierced her skin with hunger, and her beautiful bruised cheekbones looked too stark for her beauty. The sheet wrapped around her broken finger was crusted dry with blood, and that was without seeing all the contusions.

I stumbled away from the bed, holding my head in my hands. “Fix her, goddammit. Just fix her.”

I couldn’t be there while the doctor stripped Tess and inspected her injuries. Just the thought of another man touching her set my blood to boil. I did the sensible thing. The only thing I could do.

Pointing a finger at Franco, I ordered, “Watch him.”

Franco nodded, stepping further into my room. Without a backward glance, I stalked to the bathroom and slammed the door. The second I couldn’t see Tess, anxiety twisted my spine. I itched to go back out there and make sure she was exactly where I left her—laid out like a f**king corpse on my bed.

My tower room, where Tess and I had indulged in blood play and whips, seemed like a joke now. It no longer gave me pleasure or satisfaction; all I saw was Tess so tiny and exhausted, bleeding and drugged.

I may never have my strong esclave again. I may never string her up and hit her because we both got off on belonging to each other.

I may have found her, but that didn’t mean a damn thing.

“Fuck!” I roared, punching the tiled wall. Instantly, my knuckles screamed and I shook my hand to release the pain. The doctor was right. I shouldn’t be around Tess when I was covered head to toe in another man’s blood. Her immune system already fought so much.

Shedding my clothes to burn later, I stepped into the shower and proceeded to scrub every inch as if I could erase the last seventeen days from existence. Make it all disappear and pretend that Tess had been beside me all along, always safe, never hurt by anyone but me.

Once I was clean, I repeated the process until my skin burned from scrubbing and the bathroom wept with steam. The stitches in my arm from the gunshot irritated, but surprisingly didn’t hurt. The scar would be a constant reminder of what I did to get Tess back. I would wear it with pride.

By the time I entered the bedroom again, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, the doctor had cleaned Tess with the help of Suzette and wrapped her chest with bandages.

He saw me looking. “She has two cracked ribs from coughing. She’s severely dehydrated and needs to be put on antibiotics to stop the pneumonia.”

Pneumonia.

Those raping f**king bastards.

I couldn’t stand still. I gritted my teeth, dragging hands through my hair as I paced.

“She should be in a hospital, but because you won’t allow that, I’ll have a few nurses stay here and administer around the clock care.”

Damn right I wouldn’t allow her to go to the hospital. She needed to heal here. Where I had a top of the line security system and a crew of men ready to kill and then ask questions. She would never be out of my sight again.

“How long before she’ll be well again?”

The doctor eyed me with annoyance as if I was a rabies-infected dog sniffing around his dinner. “Time heals everything. You need to be patient.”

I stopped, glaring. “Don’t give me bullshit answers. How long?”

He looked back to Tess, applying antiseptic balms to the shallow cuts and bruises all over her body. “It will take however long it needs to take. You’re to be gentle with her until then. No rushing her. She’ll be fragile as the drugs leave her system. She needs someone strong and collected, not—” He stopped and looked up, waving at me with the tube of antiseptic. “—not a feral animal who looks like he wants to rip her throat out.”

Suzette shifted, anger radiating off her tiny frame. “My master found her and brought her back. Don’t say he’s—”

I held up my hand. Suzette was sweet but I didn’t need her interference. “I’d never f**king hurt her, doctor. Just do what you have to do.”

Suzette looked at me with tears shimmering in her eyes and I glanced away. I couldn’t look at her right now. Not while I hung on to my sanity so delicately. If anyone showed me any pity or compassion, I would most likely do one of two things: beat them stupid or burst into f**king tears.

And I didn’t do tears.

Ever.

No one spoke a word while the doctor set up an IV and started Tess on the course of antibiotics. “Without having the results of the blood work for a few days, I won’t know what drugs they made her take, but I’ve added a few things to counteract the effects of withdrawal. She’ll still feel pretty low, but it should be bearable.”

Bearable? I didn’t want Tess to bear through it. I wanted her to be repaired and given her wholesomeness back. I wanted her to rest in peace, not bear through agony.

“Give her something stronger.”

The doctor shook his head. “I’ll assess once she comes around again. Don’t tell me how to do my job and I won’t ask how you came to paint yourself in someone else’s blood.” His eyes hardened; we had a pissing contest of wills.

Suzette cleared her throat, breaking the silence.

I moved toward the window, glaring outside. I needed to do something—anything to stop myself going crazy.

The doctor took his time with the full exam, then turned his attention to repairing Tess’s finger. He cringed once he unwrapped it.

“Who the hell were these people?” he whispered.

My chest swelled with pride. He used were. Past tense. Even the shiny doctor and his morals knew the bastards weren’t alive.

That’s right. I struck the match. I doused them in gasoline. I stole their lives and made them f**king burn in an old fish factory in Rio.

The memory of the blazing fire helped purge my mind a little of what I’d done. Almost as if it put a giant full stop at the end of a dark and disturbing sentence. What happened in there would live with me forever, but the fire made it all disappear.

The doctor sluiced Tess’s hand in orange sterilizing liquid and Suzette held a handkerchief to her mouth, gagging at the horrible sight. She bolted upright. “I, eh… I’ll come back.”

Franco sidestepped from the doorway, letting Suzette leave. I motioned for him to go, too. He nodded and disappeared.

I stayed right where I was as the doctor realigned the bone and added a few stitches where her skin had been pierced. Once completed, he smeared more orange stuff all over and wrapped it up with a splint and gauze.

“Will she be able to use it?” My voice was calm but I wanted to slam my fist into the wall.

The crushing weight of blame stole oxygen from my lungs. I did this to Tess. I let her be taken. I let her prance around with a f**king tracking beacon in her neck.

How was I going to live with this overwhelming guilt?

Tess fell for the wrong man—a useless man who would never ever forgive himself.

The doctor nodded. “In time, yes. Don’t expect a miracle overnight, but the human body has an amazing ability to knit together and overcome injuries that look unfixable.”

I exploded. “In time. In time! That’s all you can say.” I threw up my hands, glaring at the curtain that hid the St. Andrew’s cross where I’d whipped Tess.

Normally my c**k would harden. It would twitch and swell at the memory of hurting her, but nothing. Nothing because the strong woman who made me so f**king hot for her just by answering back was gone. She’d been replaced with someone incapable of receiving any more violence.

I lost the fighter and been given a broken f**king bird and I honestly didn’t know what that meant for me.

The beast inside mourned heavily—dug a pit to curl up in because he would never be free again.

Yes, I’d rehabilitated hundreds of women, paid for their healing, coaxed them back to life—but I never stood by their bedside and nursed. It wasn’t in me to tend to something so weak. Sickness and frailty were things I couldn’t be around, and yet, I couldn’t leave Tess to heal on her own. I would be with her every step of the way.

But by seeing her so weak, my lust would die, my need to hurt her would shrivel. I would distance myself to protect her all because she could no longer handle what I needed.

I have Tess back, but it’s not enough.