Normally, I'd send someone else. Not this time. For some reason I can’t explain, I want to do this one myself.
It’s past three in the morning when I spot her through the plate-glass window of the laundromat on Paulina. The duffel bag visible through the glass snags my attention first. Then the posture. The particular curve of someone sleeping in public, spine bowed inward, a body that knows—perhaps through learned experience—that taking up space invites attention.
She’s curled up on the last chair in a row of plastic chairs with her bag clutched to her chest. Even through the window, I can see her thinness, the hollowed-out quality to her face that tells a story of a woman running on “not enough” for a long time.
I catalog her the way I catalog every situation—neutral, tactical.
I notice the way her wrists cross over the bag strap, fine bones showing beneath pale skin. The line of her throat where her jacket has slipped. The architecture of her collarbones.
I’m supposed to be assessing a witness. A liability. A problem.
Instead, I’m sitting here noting the curve of her wrist. Somewhat disgusted with myself, I get out of the car.
In the laundromat, I get a whiff of detergent and hot metal. The dryers turning through their cycle emit a low rattle. Two other people are inside, neither paying attention to anything. I take the chair across from her. The plastic scrapes on tile, and she’s awake before I’ve settled my weight.
Her eyes fly open, and when they find my face, every drop of color drains from her.
I watch her read me. Not my face—my body. The shoulders first, measuring width. Then my hands, which are resting loosely on my thighs, and I see the moment she clocks the scarred knuckles with a shift in her pupils. Her gaze tracks up to my jaw, the set of my mouth—and what moves across her face isn't recognition. It's classification. She knows exactly who—or what—she’s looking at.
She’s off the chair and racing for the door before I finish standing. I catch her wrist—not hard, but firm enough she can’t pull free—and the contact does something I wasn't braced for. My hand closes around her wrist with room to spare, fingersoverlapping. Her skin is cold, but her pulse hammers against my thumb, fast and frantic and impossibly alive.
She fights. Silently. No screaming, no calling for help. The silence is telling. She already knows screaming won’t help.
I let go. Step back. Put my hands up where she can see them.
She presses against the wall near the door with her duffel between us like a barricade. Her eyes are wide and wild, but they’re still working—still reading me, still cataloging. Flicking down to my hands, then up to meet my steady gaze.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I tell her.
She doesn’t move.
“If I wanted you dead, you’d already be dead.”
Her face shifts at that. Not relief—recalibration. She’s adjusting her threat model to include that information. Good. She's smart.
“Then what do you want?” Her voice is low and even. Better controlled than I expected from someone whose pulse was just jackrabbiting under my thumb.
“You witnessed something you shouldn't have,” I say plainly. No version of this conversation benefits from sugarcoating. “In my world, witnesses don’t survive. My brothers, my crew—they expect me to handle it.”
Her grip on the duffel strap tightens. Her knuckles go bone-white.
“But, as I said, I’m not here to hurt you. I came with a proposition.”
“Proposition?”
“There’s a scenario where we both benefit. Marriage.” I hold her gaze. “As my wife, you wouldn’t be compelled to testify about what you saw. And no one in our world would dare touch the wife of Declan O’Rourke.”
I watch closely and see the very moment the name registers. Although no sound emerges, her lips move as she mouths,“O’Rourke.”
The silence stretches.
“T-that’s your solution?” Her voice has a dry, incredulous edge that doesn’t match the terror still visible in her posture. “I watched you…dothe thing…and your solution is a wedding?”
“My solution keeps you alive. And I’m in need of a wife.” I shrug. “As far as I can see, it’s a win-win.”
Her eyes cut to the door. Then down to her bag. Then over to my hands. She’s running calculations, and her attention lingers on my hands a beat too long.
“What happens if I say no?”
