Because by then, they'd beaten empathy out of me. Replaced it with something colder. More useful.
Happy fucking birthday.
What would Mila say if she found that out?
Not a chance.
Not a fucking chance.
She saw me as a protector. A good man. Someone who'd stepped in front of danger because it was the right thing to do.
If she knew the truth—that I'd been killing since I was old enough to drive—she'd run.
And I wouldn't blame her.
I pushed off the wall and started walking again, forcing my mind back to the present.
The residency was a block behind me. Mila was inside, probably talking to her friends, laughing at something someonesaid, her camera slung over her shoulder like it was part of her body.
Safe.
For now.
I scanned the street again—faces, vehicles, windows—and felt the weight of the pistol tucked into my waistband, hidden beneath my jacket.
Merrick was out there somewhere. Watching. Waiting. Planning his next move.
And when he made it, I'd be ready.
Because this time, I wasn't a scared kid at St. Paul's.
I was the thing they'd built me to be.
And, God, help anyone who tried to take what was mine.
20
MILA
The residency smelled like coffee and turpentine and something faintly metallic, like old keys warmed in a pocket. Familiar. Comforting. When I pushed through the heavy glass doors, the space received me the way it always had—without commentary, without alarm. Whitewashed brick. Tall windows. The low murmur of artists pretending not to watch one another too closely.
Normal.
That was the strange thing. The world had not adjusted itself to match the magnitude of what had happened to me. No one paused mid-sentence to ask if I was okay. A delivery truck idled outside. Someone laughed in French near the sink.
And yet, I felt like I was walking through the aftermath of a storm that no one else had noticed.
I slipped my camera strap more securely over my shoulder and took a breath that felt practiced rather than natural. I told myself I was here to work. To anchor myself in routine. To remember that the life I was building in Paris did not begin orend with a man, no matter how profoundly he had rearranged me.
Still, everything felt louder.
The click of my boots on concrete. The scrape of a chair leg. The hum of the lights overhead.
I was newly sensitive to edges, to movement, to the way space held memory. Connor’s presence clung to me—his steadiness, his intensity, the way he’d looked at me that morning as if he could see all the versions of me layered together and liked them all.
I set my bag down at my desk and touched the surface lightly, grounding myself in the grain of the wood.
“Mila?”
