The bed.

I couldn’t approach such a thing—especially after we’d had sex on it—but I gritted my teeth and stalked toward the bedroom we’d shared. To the crumpled sheets and the lingering scent of sadness and lust.

Empty.

Instantly, I missed her presence.

There was no rustle of femininity. No prickle of her eyes on my body.

No silent mouse or brave Pimlico.

The room was bare.

My stomach turned to lead as I spun slowly, peering into the bathroom, believing any second she’d come out and I’d stride forward and gather her in a bone-crunching hug.

A hug that would turn to kissing.

A kiss that would turn to touching.

A touch that would turn to fucking.

A nightmare

that

I

could

never

fucking

stop.

Inhaling hard, I pinched the bridge of my nose, shoving aside those thoughts and focusing on the vacant room.

She was gone.

Which was probably a good thing. An excellent thing. But the knowledge she’d snuck out while I sulked in the other room tore my skin from my skeleton.

Then my gaze fell on the folded note on the bed.

Ah, shit.

Raking fingernails over my scalp, I shook my head as if denial would change the finality of the white paper.

“No.” I backed away rather than shot for it.

I already knew what it said. This was my fault. I’d scared her off. I’d hurt her. Through my actions and harshness, I’d told her to leave. I’d wanted this to happen even though I’d negate such a claim.

“Fuck.”

She’d been too strong for her own good. She’d ignored her distrust of strangers and choosen a corrupt world over me.

Forcing myself forward, I picked up the letter.

The penmanship was familiar from reading her notes to No One. My eyes skimmed the text—absorbing the theme but unable to fully soak in her crippling message.

Sentences like I always knew our time together was temporary—just like you.

And This is goodbye, Elder.

They were too violently excruciating to accept.

Instead, I looked at the scribble over Pimli- at the bottom and froze.

Goddammit, could the pain get any worse?

I crumpled up her note, doing my best to hide what I’d seen—what she’d given me—but the six little letters of her signature burned upon my retinas.

Not the name given to her by misfortune.

But her true name.

The name Selix had told me yesterday when he’d informed me of the location of Pim’s mother. The name I’d known and hadn’t told her—even as I demanded more of her heart than I could ever deserve.

Tasmin.

“Fuck.” I hung my head, balling the letter tighter with rage. She hadn’t enlightened me on her last name, but it didn’t matter.

I knew that, too.

I’d stolen her right to tell me, and it made me a shitty human being.

Tasmin Blythe.

The psychology student from West London with good grades, a lonely existence, and perfect behaviour as a role model daughter to one of the most prolific criminal psychologists in the United Kingdom.

Selix had been the one to find out, but I hadn’t stopped there.

I’d turned to Google, and instead of asking Pim everything I wanted to know, I once again stooped to stalking. I’d read her letters to No One, and now I’d read facts written about her online by third parties.

No matter what information Google gave me, it hadn’t given me an ounce of what I’d learned by living with her. Google could tell me about the night of her abduction. It could deliver missing person reports, newspaper articles of this shining rising star, and how police had no leads. But it couldn’t tell me what she smelled like, laughed like, moaned like. It couldn’t teach me the way her eyes widened when I gave her a compliment or how her teeth indented her lower lip as I kissed her throat.

But Google had told me things Pim didn’t know herself. A few months after her kidnapping, more documents appeared, but this time, they focused on her mother. The mother who was suddenly thrust into the limelight, eclipsing her daughter’s disappearance with her own heinous actions.

I had it all wrong.

I thought I wanted information. That I wanted every secret and hidden agenda. However, gaining that knowledge from a computer screen was hollow and woefully unsatisfying.

What I truly wanted was Pim. I wanted the beauty of her voice as she told me about her studies. I wanted the perfection of her face as she reminisced about childhood pets or favourite places.

Pim had started as my charity case and ended up meaning so much more. She left before I could tell her why I needed her so goddamn much.

You could go after her.

I knew her home address.

I’d used Google Earth to study her old apartment. I’d used street view to walk the same cobblestone alleys she had before she’d been taken.

I could go there and wait for her. Or I could march through Monaco and find her and tell her the truth about what her mother did and what it meant for her future.