On the walk back, an older woman stops me. She has a helmet of gray hair, kind eyes, and a grocery bag clutched in her hand.
"You're Declan's wife." Not a question.
"Yes."
She steps closer and pats my arm. "Good boy, that one. Fixed my furnace last February when I couldn't afford the repair and wouldn't accept a dime." Her eyes crinkle. “Take good care of him, dear."
I nod. My throat refuses to work.
Good is not the word I’d use for a man I watched execute someone with the emotional register of someone checking a task off a list.
But I’ve noticed things too.
Yesterday, I saw him feeding a stray cat on the fire escape. He left a small handful of cat food on the fire escape ledge. He didn’t know I was watching from my bedroom window.
It was an odd sight. I didn’t think he was the kind of man who’d show tenderness to an animal.
When I round the corner onto Declan's street, the same tabby cat darts across my path and stops at the base of the stairs leading up to the brownstone. It sits. Waits.
I climb the steps, and the cat follows.
At the door, I glance down. The cat looks up at me with yellow eyes, patient and expectant.
I push inside, and the cat slips through behind me.
In the kitchen, I set the bags on the counter and crouch. The cat winds around my ankles, purring.
"Does he feed you?"
The cat doesn't answer, but when I open the pantry, I find a bag of cat food tucked behind the canned goods.
I stare at it for a long moment, and as I do, I hear an odd rhythmic thud coming from below, from the basement, muffled and insistent.
I leave the cat with a bowl of food and move toward the sound. The basement door is ajar. Stairs descend into a pool of fluorescent glow.
I shouldn't. I know I shouldn't, but curiosity wins out. I take them one at a time, one hand on the railing.
At the bottom, the basement opens up into a converted gym with weights against the wall, a bench press, and a heavy punching bag. Declan is shirtless and barefoot with his fists wrapped in tape. He’s slamming them into the heavy bag with a force that makes the chains rattle.
I stop at the base of the stairs and watch.
His back is to me. Broad shoulders slick with sweat. Muscle shifting under skin with every strike. His spine curves and straightens, abs contracting, obliques flexing. The rhythm is brutal, relentless. Left, right, left, right. The bag swings. The chains creak.
I know the look. I've worn it myself—the kind of fury that needs an outlet or it turns inward and eats you alive. He's not training. He's purging.
He pivots, and I see his face. Jaw tight. Eyes unfocused. A man alone with whatever demons he's trying to beat into submission.
My pulse kicks. The reaction isn't fear. It's longing. Heat races through my body and settles low in my stomach. A sexual pull I’ve never felt before.
The breadth of him. The raw, physical power. The way his body moves—efficient, dangerous, and controlled even in violence. I've seen dangerous men before. I've cataloged them, avoided them, and survived them.
This feels different.
He catches the bag mid-swing and stills.
Then he turns.
His eyes find mine across the basement, and the air between us thickens.
