A moment of silence. Then a vicious scoff.
“I don’t care about your fucking complications. I want that bitch dead before morning. She cannot show up for court. Do you understand?”
Every muscle in my jaw knots. The room narrows around me, heat crawling up my spine in a slow burn I have to force down.
I hang up without a word.
The phone stays in my hand, but my focus snaps to Laurette sitting on the bed, eyes blown wide.
Someone sent a man to kill her. And they’ll try again.
But they’ll never succeed while I’m breathing.
Not ever.
Laurette’s voice breaks the silence, thin and trembling. “That was… damn… that was Evan’s mother, Helene Lemaire.”
I don’t need her to explain how she knows. The clipped German, the venom in every syllable, the entitlement of a woman who’s never heard the wordno. It all fits together.
I nod once.
She swallows hard, eyes flicking from the phone to the dead man on her floor.
Shock must be rippling through her—how calculated it was, how well-funded, how easily Helene Lemaire reached into her life. But the deepest cut is the simplest one. The mother of the man she’ll prosecute in court tomorrow sent a killer into her bedroom tonight.
Laurette’s world and mine don’t touch, not officially, not on paper. But right now they collide, shatter, and fuse.
There’s no undoing it. Not for her.
Not for me.
A low breath slips out of me, half-laugh, half-disbelief, as I stareat the burner phone, the corpse, and the bruises blooming across Laurette’s throat.
I rub a hand down my face. “Well, this is a fine fucking mess.”
She’s still shaking and pulling in shallow, uneven drags of air, but the lawyer in her comes roaring back fast. “It’s okay. The law will protect you.I’llprotect you. I’ll handle everything, Bastien.”
God. She truly believes that. She’s sure she can fix this and everything will be okay.
I glance from the corpse on her floor to the wide, unsettling sincerity in her eyes.
“No, Babygirl. You don’t understand.” I take a step closer, holding her gaze. “I can’t be here when the police come.”
She blinks at me, confusion struggling with fear. “What do you mean you can’t be here?”
There’s no clean way to give her the truth. No version that won’t break everything between us.
And I won’t lie to her. I can’t.
“I’m not the good guy.”
Her head shakes before the words even settle. “I don’t believe that.”
Of course she doesn’t. She’s still high on survival, holding fast to the idea that the man who saved her is someone heroic.
“You saw what I’m capable of with my bare hands. Heroes don’t do that.”
I hold her gaze and let the truth settle for a moment.
