Her voice dropped. “Even if I walk away now, I’ll still be the girl a stranger died for. And I’ll never get to not be that again.”
I stepped forward, but this time slower and more careful.
“If you want to run,” I said, “I won’t stop you. I won’t follow. You deserve to choose what comes next for you, but I won’t stop until they’re all dead. Even if you walk out that door, I am going to finish what I started.”
She looked at me, her eyes rimmed with tears, and then she walked past. Her shoulder brushed mine like a ghost passing through my body.
She went out the door. She didn’t slam it, just closed it softly behind her. I stood in the middle of the room where she had almost died, where I’d kneeled for the first time in my life, and I wondered if I’d just traded one grave for another.
I stared at the empty doorway like I could rewind time just by willing it. I didn’t chase her because I had told her I wouldn’t. I didn’t even breathe because I’d seen it in her eyes: not just betrayal butabandonment.
Minutes passed. Maybe hours. I didn’t know. I couldn’t move from the place where I stood by the bed.
Then the door burst open again – slammed against the inside wall so hard the frame shook. She was back, chest heaving, eyes bright with something dangerous. Not fear this time.Rage.Her fists were clenched at her side, jaw tight, tears dried but not gone. She threw the burner phone hard against the wall, and it broke into several plastic pieces.
She stormed into the room like she was ready for a fight, and my heart jumped in my chest. I didn’t know if she was here to hit me, scream, or kill me. She crossed the space between uswith purpose, grabbed me by my shirt collar, and shoved me backwards. I didn’tlether; she caught me off guard enough that my back hit the wall.
“You should’ve told me,” she snapped.
“I know, but I—”
“Shutup.”
I did.
She got in my face, close enough for me to feel her breath. “You keep saying you’re doing this for me. That all of it’s about keeping me safe, but you don’t even look at me. Not really. You’re neverhere.”
“I’m looking at you now. I’m here.” I tried to hold her stare.
“No,” she said, eyes narrowing. “You’re hiding behind that dead-calm voice and that empty stare and all that fucking coldness like it’s armor. You want to protect me?”
She shoved me again.
“Eden—”
“Show mesomething,Halo. Be human for five seconds. Scream at me, hate me, tell me you wish I never came into your life. Cry.Anything.Just stop pretending you don’t feel anything.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You’re a fucking liar. You’ve been treating me like baggage from the beginning, like some… I don’t know. Some kind of quest that you were forced to take on.”
“I wouldburn this world to the groundbefore I let it so much as touch you. I killed that girl to buy you time. I put a bullet in someone who looked like you so Matteo would think he already won. I have killed four more men who were coming to find you. I would do it again, and I’ll keep doing it. If I had a thousand lives, I would spend them all doing this.”
She stepped in close. “I want to hate you,” she said, chest to mine.
“You should.”
“I don’t know if I can still trust you.”
She looked down at the table, at the knife I’d just cleaned and then she grabbed it. As she held it up between us, I had a surge of panic that she would turn it on herself like she had with the gun… but instead, she offered it to me, handle first.
“Prove I still can.”
I stared at her, pulse hammering as I muttered her name in uncertainty again.
“You said you’d never hurt me,” she whispered, “so show me what that means.”
I took the knife, slowly, like she might change her mind. She didn’t. She stepped back and pulled the hoodie off her shoulders, revealing just the black tank top underneath, already damp from sweat and anger and adrenaline.
