“You’re staring,” she murmurs, not accusatory. Just… aware.
I force my eyes back to her face, but the distance between us has somehow closed without either of us taking a step. The air feels warmer. Heavier. I can smell her shampoo under the sterile base air, something clean and familiar that twists something low in my chest.
“This is a bad idea,” I say under my breath.
She lifts her chin. “Which part?”
All of it.
I don’t answer. Instead, I step back—one deliberate pace, then another—rebuilding the space like a barrier I can lean on. Like distance is still something I can control if I move carefully enough.
“We’ll be ready,” I say, returning to the mission because it’s safer than whatever this is. “Extra security. Eyes everywhere. Plainclothes and overt. If Mikhail makes a move, it’ll be on our terms.”
She watches me, expression unreadable. “And if he doesn’t?”
“Then we endure a long night and go home,” I say. “Either way, we don’t give him a reason to think we’re scared.”
Her mouth tilts slightly. Not a smile. Something sharper. “You’re scared.”
I don’t deny it. “That’s why I’m careful.”
Another beat of silence. The kind that feels like standing in front of a live wire and pretending you don’t hear it buzzing.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I say finally, pushing off the desk. “I’ll come by early. We’ll ride together to the club.”
Her eyes flicker at that. Surprise. Something softer. Something that looks too much like relief for me to trust my own reaction to it.
“Together?” she repeats.
“It’ll look normal,” I say. “Family-adjacent. Familiar.” I pause at the door, my hand hovering over the handle. “And I won’t let you walk into that place alone.”
For a moment, it feels like she might say something that would make it harder to leave. Something honest. Something I am absolutely not equipped to hear from her while she’s standing there in a towel looking at me like that.
She doesn’t.
“Okay,” she says quietly.
I nod once, open the door, and stop myself from looking back too long.
“I’ll be nearby,” I add. “Try to get some sleep.”
Then I’m gone—back into the hallway, back into the hum and steel and rules—telling myself that distance is the only thing keeping either of us safe right now.
Even as every instinct I have screams that the morning is coming too fast.
Chapter 19
Delilah Barrinheart
I’m back there.
The walls are too close, the air damp and stale, my wrists burning where the restraints bite in deeper every time I struggle. Someone is shouting, but it takes me a second to realize it’s me. My throat is raw, my voice useless.
He said he’d come back.
He said—
Pain explodes across my ribs, knocking the breath from my lungs. I curl inward instinctively, trying to protect what little of myself is left.
