---- Chapter 17 Hamilton Glass POV: "My love was a cage, Hamilton," Anya's voice was quiet, but each word was a hammer blow to the crumbling ruins of my self-worth. "And I've finally learned how to fly." | staggered back, the truth of her words a physical force. All those years, | thought | was protecting her, sheltering her. But | was just a zookeeper, clipping her wings to make sure she never flew higher than | could. My desperation, my all-consuming need to find Kacey, suddenly felt like a hollow, selfish pursuit. It wasn't about protecting Anya. It was about me. About assuaging my own guilt. About trying to prove | wasn't the monster | knew myself to be. "Anya, please," | rasped, my voice thick with a self-loathing so profound it felt like | was choking on it. "Kacey... she's out there somewhere. She's dangerous. She tried to hurt you, to hurt the baby. | have to find her." | took a step toward her, my hand outstretched, needing to check for myself that she was real, that she was unharmed. Dante Mullen moved faster than | thought possible, his hand clamping down on my wrist like a vice. "Don't you dare touch ---- her," he snarled, his eyes blazing with a protective fury that |, in my pathetic jealousy, had never been able to muster. "You lost the right to even breathe the same air as her when you chose that venomous snake over her." "You don't know anything!" | shot back, trying to wrench my arm free. He just tightened his grip. "| know enough. | know that she is a once-in-a-generation genius who you kept hidden in a basement like a dirty secret. | know that you stood by and let your family and your new bride try to destroy her. You're not a man, Glass. You're a coward." His words, combined with the sight of Anya standing silently behind him, her expression unreadable, made something inside me snap. The raw, primal fear of losing her for good, of being replaced by a better man, a worthy man, erupted in a torrent of ugly, unforgivable words. "And what are you?" | sneered, my voice dripping with a venom | didn't recognize as my own. "Her new keeper? Did you find her vulnerability appealing, Mullen? Does it make you feel powerful to rescue the poor, broken little orphan?" Anya flinched. A tiny, almost imperceptible movement, but | saw it. And it was like plunging a knife into my own heart. "The baby..." | went on, the madness taking over, "Is it even mine? Or did you move on that fast, Anya? Did you trade up the second a richer, more powerful man showed you some attention?" ---- The moment the words left my mouth, | wanted to claw them back. The air grew frigid. The look on Anya's face was no longer pitying or annoyed. It was... nothing. A complete void. She had looked at me with more emotion when she was ordering coffee. | had finally managed to hurt her so badly that | had erased myself from her emotional landscape entirely. Dante looked like he was about to physically tear me apart. "Let him go, Dante," Anya said, her voice eerily calm. He looked at her, then back at me, and with a final, contemptuous shove, he released my wrist. "Leave, Hamilton," she said, her eyes focused on a point somewhere over my shoulder. "Now." "Anya, | didn't mean-" "| said, leave," she repeated, her voice flat, final. "Or | will have the security from my father's estate remove you. And they won't be as gentle as Mr. Mullen." | looked at her face, her beautiful, beloved face, now a cold, remote mask. | looked at her hand, resting protectively on her child-our child, a voice screamed in my head. And | looked at Dante Mullen, standing guard, her silent, stoic protector. The fight drained out of me, replaced by a crushing, world- ending despair. | had done it again. In my desperate, clumsy attempt to fix things, | had only managed to shatter them ---- more completely. | stumbled backward, turning away from the sight of them together. It was more than | could bear. As | walked back to my car, a broken, empty shell of a man, | realized the full, horrifying truth. | hadn't just lost her. | had become the villain in her story. And villains never get a happy ending. The sound of my engine roaring to life was the sound of my final, pathetic retreat. | had lost the war, the battle, and my own soul. It was over.