“Boss is looking for you,” he says, tossing a roll of tape at the table. “You skipped a meeting.”
“I wasn’t scheduled.”
“Doesn’t matter. He says you’re slipping.”
I arch a brow. “Does he?”
Esteban nods, still watching me. “Said your last cleanup was messy. Too loud. Got seen.”
I shrug out of my jacket, toss it over a chair. “No one’ll talk.”
“Still. You used to be cleaner.”
The words hang there.
I step closer, slow and deliberate. “You volunteering to take my jobs now?”
He shakes his head, but not like he’s scared. Just careful. “Just passing along the message. Mateo says you’re distracted.”
I don’t answer. I know better than to confirm it.
But he’s not wrong.
Later, when I’m alone again, I lie back on the cot in the corner of the office. They let me call a room. The ceiling is cracked and spotted with damp, and the light buzzes like it’s dying. I stare at nothing and listen to her voice all over again, playing back in pieces.
Rage is a clever disguise.
It never lasts long enough to be real.
She doesn’t know me. But I think she’s getting close.
6
KALEIGH
The air has weight tonight.
It sinks into the walls, clings to the furniture, settles on my skin like a second layer I can’t shake. I have the windows cracked, more out of habit than comfort, but the breeze that slides in does little to cool the heat crawling beneath my collarbones. Even the fan in the corner only pushes the air around like it’s tired of doing its job.
I sit cross-legged on my couch with my laptop open and resting on a stack of pillows. I haven’t moved in over an hour. The lamp beside me buzzes faintly, the only sound inside this little apartment that isn’t the clicking of my nails against the keys. On the table: cold tea, three different reference books stacked haphazardly, and a half-eaten slice of mantecado from the bakery downstairs that I lost interest in around paragraph four.
I’m supposed to be writing a formal profile. That’s what Mateo wants. A neat little document he can file away under whatever code name he’s assigned Rafe Calderon, something sanitized and authoritative that he can quote to his inner circleto prove he has control over the walking weapon he keeps on a leash.
But there’s nothing clean about what I’m seeing. No template that fits.
I scroll through my notes, the list growing longer each time I read back over it. Sudden bursts of aggression with no visible lead-up. Pacing that seems more like an animal marking territory than a man releasing tension. Sleep disturbances he won’t admit to. Aversion to prolonged eye contact except when he initiates it, and then he doesn’t break it unless he wants to remind you who’s in charge.
He’s not just dangerous.
He’s deliberate.
That’s what keeps pulling me back. The intent behind every word he speaks. He doesn’t react, he tests. He doesn’t explode, he calculates. His violence is never clumsy. It’s elegant in the way a predator’s strike is elegant, like something ancient coiled in muscle and instinct.
I lean my head back and stare at the ceiling, the shadows above me crawling with the half-formed shapes of thoughts I can’t quite name. I’ve spent the better part of my career trying to understand what happens to people after trauma breaks them—how they rebuild, how they twist, how they fracture—but Rafe isn’t fractured. He’s layered. He carries his past like armor, but something beneath that steel is still breathing, still pulsing.
Still watching.
I close the laptop and let it rest against my knees. Across the room, the journal sits on the table, pages curling from where the summer humidity is warping the spine. I’ve been avoiding it. Writing things down makes them real, and I haven’t quite decided if I want to admit how deep into this I’ve already sunk.
