"Someone's been pulling court records," he says before I can even say a word. "Everything related to Judge Deveraux's case."
My blood chills, though my expression doesn't change.
I move to my office, closing the door behind me. "Who?"
"Working on it. But Cassius, the eight-year anniversary is next week. Media might pick it up again. You know how they love their tragedy retrospectives."
Eight years since I put two bullets in her parents and created the broken creature now sleeping in my bed.
Eight years since I wore that leather mask and became death walking through their suburban home.
The irony isn't lost on me—their daughter is naked in my bed, covered in my marks, begging for her parents' killer to hurt her more.
"Find out who's digging," I order. "And Vincent? Have Peter and Paul sweep her apartment. I want everything—journals, photos, anything that tells me who she really is."
"You could just ask her."
"She doesn't know who she really is yet. I'm about to show her."
"This is dangerous, Cassius. If she finds out?—"
"She won't."
"You sound certain for someone who's breaking every one of his own rules. You don't let anyone sleep in your bed. You don't keep them past one night. You certainly don't clear Hell for them."
He's right.
I've broken every protocol I've established in the decade since I took over from my father.
But there's something about her—something beyond the sick satisfaction of corrupting the judge's daughter.
"Just get me the information," I tell him.
I end the call and move to my laptop, pulling up the surveillance footage from her apartment that my men installed months ago when I first learned she was asking about Purgatory.
Twenty-three hundred square feet of mundane existence.
Beige walls, practical furniture, everything safe and boring except?—
The bedroom.
Her bedroom walls are dark red, almost black in certain light.
No photos of her parents in there, though they're everywhere else in the apartment.
The living room has their wedding photo, their family portraits, her father in his judge's robes.
But not the bedroom. She can't sleep with them watching.
And hidden in her nightstand drawer, barely visible in the footage, are things that would shock anyone who knows the "good" Selene.
Toys she's never used with anyone—still in their packaging, but well-researched based on the browser history we pulled.
Rope, she's never let anyone tie—but she's practiced on herself, the footage shows her late at night, trying to recreate something she doesn't understand.
Books about dominance and submission with pages marked and notes in the margins.
One note, captured when she left the book open, makes my cock harden: "I want someone to take the choice away. I want to be forced to feel."
