“Out? Now?”
“Restaurant in town. Somewhere normal.”
Her eyes flick toward the windows, toward the tree line, toward the shadows she no longer trusts.
“You sure?” she asks.
“Yes.”
I brush my thumb across her cheek. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
We drive to the only restaurant in Cedar Lake Falls that has proper linen napkins. Lucky sits close enough that her thigh brushes mine, but she’s quiet—too quiet. Hyperaware. Trigger-bright.
I keep one hand on her leg under the table. The contact steadies her. Steadies me too.
She’s scanning the room the way I usually do. She’s not built for fear, not this kind. It doesn’t suit her. She looks caged in her own skin.
“Talk to me,” I murmur, leaning close.
She exhales shakily. “Maybe I should have run. Maybe staying was stupid. Maybe—”
The bell over the restaurant door rings. Noise, cut clean.
I look up on instinct.
Three suits walk in—too sharp, too polished for this small town. Money stamped on their collars. But it’s the tall one in front who makes my stomach go cold. That practiced smirk. That sense of entitlement that enters a room before he does.
He scans the tables like he’s hunting something he already owns.
Beside me, Lucky goes rigid. Not tense—stone still.
Her fork halfway to her mouth, fingers trembling.
“Jett,” she whispers, voice scraped thin.
The name hits like a trigger pull.
ThatJett.
The one who tried to “mentor” her. The one who groomed an orphaned young girl into believing she owed him her loyalty, her time, her future. The parasite, she still flinches remembering.
My vision narrows. Quiet. Cold.
I don’t need the details. Her reaction tells me enough.
He spots us, and that smirk widens—recognition, then possession.
“Ah,” he says, arms opening like he’s greeting a pet. “My girl.”
Lucky flinches like he struck her.
Every rational part of me folds up and locks away. What’s left is simple: remove the threat.
I stand slowly, placing myself between them before Jett gets close enough to breathe the same air she’s in.
“You’re going to leave,” I say. Calm. Flat. The kind of tone that precedes violence.
Jett tuts, delighted with himself. “Is that really how you greet the man who built her career?”
