I lie in my room, staring at the ceiling, thinking about dark eyes and a smile that almost happened and the way she called mekindlike she actually believed it.
No one calls me kind. No one looks at me and sees anything but what I am—the threat, the enforcer, the monster they send when they need something ugly done. That's the point. That's what I've built. A wall so high and so thick that no one can get close enough to matter.
She looked at me like I might be safe.
I get up at 2 AM. Tell myself I'm just restless. Just checking the perimeter. Walk down the hallway on silent feet and pause outside her door.
Silence. She's asleep. Or at least she's quiet.
I go back to my room. Lie down. Stare at the ceiling some more.
At 4 AM, I do it again. Same hallway. Same door. Same pathetic excuse about checking on things.
I don't do this. I don't get attached. I don't lie awake thinking about women I just met, wondering what her laugh sounds like, wondering what it would take to make that almost-smile turn into a real one.
But here I am.
I'm in trouble. The kind of trouble I haven't allowed myself in fifteen years. The kind that gets people killed.
And God help me, I don't want to walk away.
CHAPTER 3
FLEUR
Iwake up disoriented.
Strange ceiling. Strange bed. Strange clothes that are too big and soft from washing and somehow make me feel safer than my own skin.
Then I remember.
The wedding. The phone call. Dominic's voice, cold and unfamiliar, talking about me like I was property. The desert. The ruined dress. The single headlight appearing out of the dusk like salvation.
Him.
I sit up slowly, taking in the room in daylight. It's sparse—just a bed, a dresser, a door that locks from the inside. My wedding dress is crumpled in the corner where I left it last night, ivory silk streaked with dirt and ruin. I can't look at it without my stomach turning.
The clothes he gave me are too big. The t-shirt hangs past my knees. The sweatpants are cinched as tight as they'll go and still sliding down my hips. I look ridiculous. I feel ridiculous.
I also feel safer than I have in weeks.
That's the part I can't make sense of. I'm in a building full of men in leather cuts, men with hard faces and harder eyes, menwho looked at me last night like I was either a threat or a joke. I should be terrified. I should be plotting my escape, figuring out how to get to a phone, calling someone—anyone—who can help me.
Instead, I slept better than I have in months.
I find him in the hallway.
He's leaning against the wall like he's been waiting, arms crossed over his chest, that permanent scowl carved into his features. In the light filtering through a window at the end of the hall, I can see him properly for the first time. The tattoos that snake up his neck, disappearing into his collar. The sheersizeof him—he makes the hallway feel narrow, makes everything around him look smaller by comparison.
He looks like he hasn't slept at all.
"Morning," I say.
"Morning." His voice is rough. Like gravel. Like he doesn't use it much.
"Did you sleep at all?"
"Some."
