He didn’t flinch. He kept washing his hands like I had said nothing at all, then reached for my dish towel on the counter and dried them slowly, deliberately. Then he laughed.
And my blood went cold.
I knew that laugh.
He turned around.
Henderson.
Even dressed head to toe in black, I couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to see it. Desirae’s words came rushing back to me all at once. I should have listened sooner.
I hadn’t noticed the black Glock sitting on my counter until he picked it up and leaned back against it like he was settling in for a conversation.
“Amore.” He smiled at me like we were old friends. “You aren’t happy to see me? You didn’t really think that little scene in the restaurant was going to be the last time, did you?”
I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin.
“It’s been you this whole time,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “All of it. Why?”
I needed him talking. And if I was being honest, I needed to hear him say it. This man had been a fixture in my life for years. He had opened doors for me, negotiated for me, stood in rooms with me when I had nobody else. And this whole time, it had been him on the other side of every terrifying moment I had tried to outrun.
“Save all that, Amore.” His tone shifted without warning, something darker bleeding through. “You wanted my attentionfrom the first moment I saw you. I felt it. I dropped everything and everyone else to be there for you. Everything was for you.” He stepped away from the counter. “And you threw all of it away!”
I held my ground even as the bass in his voice made the air in the room feel different.
“So standing in my yard in the middle of the night was your way of showing me that? Breaking into my home and destroying everything I had was love?”
Henderson picked up the gun and pressed it against his own temple, pacing now, moving back and forth in front of the counter like something was vibrating just beneath his skin.
“I may have taken it further than I planned. But I needed you to feel what I feel. Why can’t you see it? I love you.” He stopped pacing. His expression curdled. “And then you come back here on the arm of some thug who doesn’t see a single thing in you that I see. He’s using you. He doesn’t know you the way I do.”
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream. I did neither.
“You killed Desirae,” I said.
The words came out quieter than I expected, and somehow that made them heavier.
Henderson tilted his head and the smile that crossed his face turned my stomach completely over.
“She had one job. Lead you to me. Instead she sat across from you at dinner and did the exact opposite.” He shook his head like he was genuinely disappointed. “She was never your friend, Solana. She told me everywhere you went for years. Every location, every trip, every detail. You trusted her and she sold every bit of it. The only reason it took me so long to find you here was because this was the one thing you never told her about.”
My throat tightened.
All those years. Every time I felt like the walls were closing in and I couldn’t figure out how anyone knew where I was. Ithad been Desirae, and it had been him. The two people I had let closest.
Henderson continued, almost wistful now.
“I still think about the look on your face the first time I showed up here. It was like you had been waiting for me. Like something in you recognized me.” His expression darkened. “And then that man walked in.”
“You mean the man I love,” I said clearly.
His jaw tightened.
“I’m going to tell you one more time,” he said, the warmth draining from his voice entirely. “Close that door. Lock it. And come here. Because I will have you, one way or another. And if I can’t, then I’ll make sure nobody else does either.”
I looked at him for a long moment.
I thought about every night I had spent afraid. Every time I had looked over my shoulder. Every home I had run from. Every version of myself I had hidden just to survive. I thought about the little girl who had nobody after her mother died. The girl who had fought her way through group homes and foster families and an industry that had chewed through her slowly.
