Four guards we could see meant probably eight inside. Maybe more. Going in with just two of us was asking for trouble.
But even as I said it, I knew what Ellsworth's answer would be.
I could see it in his eyes—that same mischievous, dangerous spark I'd seen earlier. The look of a man who'd just been offered exactly the kind of trouble he'd been craving since the day he turned in his kit and walked away from the only life he'd ever known.
The look of a man who'd been playing butler for weeks and wasdyingfor a chance to do what he was actually good at.
Ellsworth's grin spread slowly across his face, years falling away as it did.
"What would be the fun in that?"
30
MILA
The café was exactly the same.
Same narrow tables pressed too close together, their legs wobbling faintly if you shifted your weight wrong. Same chalkboard menu tilted at a stubborn angle, as if whoever hung it had done so on principle rather than precision. Same low clatter of cups and saucers, the hiss of the espresso machine punctuating conversations that rose and fell in overlapping rhythms.
And yet, nothing about it felt the way it had before.
I sat at the small round table by the window—the one I’d been sitting at the first time I saw Connor—and wrapped my hands around a porcelain cup that had already begun to cool.
Outside, Paris moved with its usual confidence. People stepped around one another without apology. Scooters threaded through traffic like they’d been granted special permission by the city itself. A woman leaned out of an upstairs window and shook a rug with theatrical flair, crumbs raining down onto the pavement below.
Life, uninterrupted.
I watched the door more out of habit than expectation, my body still remembering the moment when everything had shifted. When he’d walked in like he belonged there—like he belonged everywhere—and had somehow chosen me out of a room full of possibilities.
God, I’m in love with him.
The thought didn’t frighten me. It didn’t arrive with panic or disclaimers or the mental asterisk I used to attach to feelings that felt too large. It simply settled in, warm and steady, like it had always known where it belonged.
I lifted the cup and took a sip, grimacing slightly.
Too bitter.
I’d ordered wrong, despite rehearsing the sentence in my head before stepping up to the counter. Somewhere between my intention and my mouth, the words turned into something approximate rather than precise.
The usual barista wasn’t there.
The one who never remembered my order and somehow always got it right, anyway.
Today it was someone new—efficient, polite, and just a little more careful with me as I stumbled through the language, my French still flattening where it shouldn’t. He nodded, filled the cup, and moved on without comment, and I found myself missing the easy familiarity of being half-known.
But that was okay. Not a big deal.
Paris had never punished me for not being fluent. It had met me where I was—awkward, earnest, trying. Some days that still frustrated me. Some days I longed for the ease of my own language, for the ability to move through conversations without second-guessing every phrase.
Today, it felt almost irrelevant.
I was happy. Occupied with other thoughts.
I glanced down at my phone—not because I expected a message, but because knowing it was there comforted me. Because knowing he was there, somewhere in the city, changed the way everything else registered.
Protected.
The idea still felt new, still sat strangely on my shoulders. I wasn’t used to safety arriving without cost, without obligation. But Ellsworth’s men had folded into the morning seamlessly—so discreet I might have missed them entirely if I hadn’t known to look.
