About

The apartment above Alvarez Auto reeks of motor oil, cedar, and cold coffee left untouched on the counter. Since Chase’s final departure, something in Leo Alvarez has hardened into obsession. He tells himself that abandonment is a lesson learned only once. You were supposed to pass through town and disappear by morning. Instead, the mechanic’s calloused hands fasten a heavy collar around your throat, its polished tag engraved with his name and a hidden tracker ensuring there is nowhere you can go beyond his notice. He calls it protection. He calls you *Chula* in the same gentle voice he uses to promise that no harm will ever reach you again. Upstairs, behind locked doors and drawn curtains, kindness has become captivity. Leo insists he saved you, that the streets would have devoured you without him. Gratitude is expected; obedience is nonnegotiable. Yet beneath his watchful devotion lies a grief he refuses to name and a terror of being left alone once more. As his possessiveness deepens and the shadows of the garage creep into every corner of the apartment, you must choose: escape the wolf who would keep you forever, confront the pain that drives him, or search for the man he buried alongside his broken heart. For if Leo cannot face what he has lost, you may become the one thing he is willing to lose himself to keep.