Further fueling my disbelief, he isn’t cruel, which only makes all of this worse.
My pulse does something traitorous, and I shove the thoughts down before they can get out of hand. But it doesn’t stop my mind from wandering anyway.
Even if I tried to keep distance between us, he’s still close enough for me to need to look up at him, and his frame seems even more imposing from this proximity.
Something in me softens as I take in his features, betrayed by whatever urge I have to lower my defenses, even if that’s the last thing I should do. It absolutely terrifies me.
Silently telling myself it’s just his pretty privilege doing what it surely does best, I turn away from him, forcing myself to put more distance between us.
“This is temporary…” I mumble, more to myself than anything.
“Most things are.”
As much as I want to pause as he says it, I don’t let myself. Instead, I push forward, needing time by myself before I start going insane and losing more of my restraint.
There’s no point in getting used to any of this. Not to him, or the illusion of softness he keeps showing me, intentional or not.
I’m waiting him out…that’s it.
It has to be it.
Chapter 11 - Wyatt
Even if I’m trying to maintain as much confidence in myself as I can, I’m still on edge as the days crawl by. With Elena by my side, it feels more like everyone in this city is waiting for their moment to strike. Everywhere I look, there could be someone waiting to take her. To get her back, or to use her as they see fit.
So I take her everywhere.
To work, meetings, even simple errands that could easily be done alone, but aren’t. Letting her out of my sight feels like tempting fate, and that isn’t something I’m willing to risk.
This is supposed to be a strategy. Risk management. But somewhere along the way, it has become something else. Something I’m still not willing to put a name to.
When I’m not keeping an eye out for someone trying to interfere, I notice the rhythm of her presence. The way she walks a half step behind me, even if she occasionally speeds up like she subconsciously wants to walk ahead, or how she anticipates my movements, more like she’s learning my habits just by proximity alone. She asks fewer questions now, but all of them are direct. Sharp.
She’s adapting fast. Almost too fast, as if this whole thing isn’t as far outside her norm as either of us assumes.
I’ve always had a general sense of paranoia ever since I found out I was being framed by Vito back in the day, and using it to my advantage has kept me alive so far. But even as time passes without any run-ins from the never-ending list of people who want me dead, I don’t relax. Every mirror gets checked twice. Every suspicious car makes me circle the block again.
At the very least, my concealed identity is still holding, and apparently, Elena’s is too.
But even if the Lukovs, the Grimaldis, or the Balakins aren’t in my rearview yet, I know how this works.
Silence doesn’t mean safety. It can be just as loaded and dangerous as a shootout itself. It just means that they’re planning and deciding the best way to execute those ideas.
Regardless, the days start to blur together with an unsettling kind of normalcy. Elena drinks coffee behind my desk like it’s hers, sits in on meetings quietly, even if she doesn’t really understand what’s going on, and she glares at me when I make decisions without consulting her, regardless of how small. She also rolls her eyes when I ask her opinion.
It would be easy to let myself dwell on how smoothly she has integrated into my life, so I don’t. Because I can’t. It’s a slippery slope I won’t tempt myself with.
Which is why I decided on a distraction after work one evening. Something I highly doubt she’d ever argue with.
Shopping.
“Shopping?” Elena asks, lifting a brow at me like it’s the last thing she ever expects to hear from me.
Sure, I didn’t expect to hear myself suggesting it either, but after I spent at least five minutes watching her stand by the window with her arms folded, looking far too restless, it hit me. Of course, those not-so-subtle demands she laid out for me the other night were lingering in the back of my mind, too. And here we are.
“Yes. You need clothes,” I tell her, grabbing my phone and keys from the desk. “You’ve been rotating the same three outfits, and they’re so subtle it’s almost defeating the purpose.”
“I’m in disguise,” she says flatly, being strangely resistant about this despite how she normally comes across with a refined arrogance that can only come from being surrounded by nice things. “Subtle is the point.”
