Who was she? “I’m not finished with you,” I cautioned, slipping out into the night.
The stacked crates complaining under my weight, I climbed. Every step a thin metallic whine that sounded loud in the hush of the docks, and for a moment I hated the old thing for threatening to betray me. Rust flaked beneath my palms, rough and powdery, clinging to my skin as I hauled myself upward, carefully placing each foot along the unstable beams.
By the time I reached the roof, my pulse was a live wire under my ribs, but the world below remained undisturbed, the warehouse crouched in its usual half-dead silence, the wind worrying the loose boards like restless fingers, similar to the way I felt right now.
Finding my perch again, I flattened myself along the rafter just as Remo entered. A fleeting pause before he stepped further into the space, eyes scanning the room. Immediately, he stiffened, gaze falling to the woman, still on the floor, breathing uneven, more out of rage than hurt.
Before she could push herself upright, he was kneeling in front of her, the motion an almost rehearsed fluidity. “Jesus, kid.” He slid an arm around her shoulders to help her sit. “What the hell happened to you?”
She tried to square her back, tried to pretend she wasn’t shaking, and the effort would’ve been almost funny if it didn’t scratch at something familiar in me. Bravery when you’re young, always looked a little like denial.
“It was nothing,” she said, swallowing. “Someone jumped me. I fought.”
He frowned. “Someone jumped you?” He tipped her chin up with a finger, inspecting the bruise darkening along her jaw, andeven from here I could see the way his expression sharpened, all softness folding into wariness. “You didn’t lose on purpose. Who was it?”
“I didn’t see her face. Mask. Dark clothes. And those eyes, I mean who wears red contacts? But God, Remo, she was…strong.” The pause before that last word told me more than the word itself. She hated admitting it.
He stilled, the movement so slight, most people would’ve missed it. My heartbeat thundered loud enough that I thought he might hear it. He was thinking of me. I felt it as surely as if he had spoken my name.
“Did she say anything?” he asked.
Alessia hesitated, her gaze drifting, nervous and instinctive, to the upper shadows of the warehouse, to the roof, to me. Although she couldn’t see me through the dark, the way her eyes lingered made my skin prickle. Animals always sensed the hunter even when they couldn’t find it.
“She said she was watching you, protecting you, that she killed those men who captured you.”
For a moment the only sound was the low hum of the fluorescent globes and the far-off slap of water against the dock. Remo let out a breath, slow and controlled. Clearly, he was compartmentalizing, much like his nightmares.
I waited for his anger. For the cold fury men get when they realized someone had been trespassing on their lives. What I saw instead made me smile.
Curiosity. Like the night I let him fuck me against that cross, that first spark of a match. It flickered across his face, faint but undeniable. Remo already knew he had a stalker. Today, he found out to what extent.
“Katana,” I rolled the name he’d called me around my tongue. Not the rarest for a killer, but it felt kind of specialbecause it was an attribute to my skill. Or perhaps I liked it even more becausehe’dgiven it to me.
He wiped the blood from Alessia’s lip with his thumb, gentle as if she were made of glass, then ran careful hands over her arms and ribs, checking for injuries, pressing here and there with quiet competence. Every touch was instinctive, protective, the sort of tenderness that came from responsibility, not desire. Now that I forced myself to really see it, the jealousy morphed, no longer anger but something older and sadder. He wasn’t touching her like a man touches a woman he wanted, more like someone he’d pulled out of a fire and silently sworn never to let burn again.
For that alone, I’d let her live.
You learned a lot just by watching someone dream. Secrets a man like him would kill for and I wondered if perhaps his history had a way of repeating itself. The realization loosened a knot inside me, one that had been wound tight for too long.
He set her carefully on a chair, grabbed a first-aid kit then wrapped her wrist with a bandage. “You did good, Alessia. You fought. That’s what matters.”
“I lost,” she muttered, scowling.
“And survived to fight another day.”
He stood and slowly turned, surveying the warehouse again, eyes dragging across every shadow, every beam, every corner where something like me might hide.
I held myself still, barely breathing, the night air cool against the sliver of skin between mask and collar. It felt like he was looking straight through the dark, the walls, through me. Not seeing, not yet, but sensing.
Good.
He should feel the absence where something should be, notice the shape of the dark and wonder why it seemed occupied.
“Where the fuck are you?” he growled into his phone a second later. Two of his men rushed through the door before he could cut the call. “Get her to the safe house,” he instructed then helped Alessia to her feet.
She leaned on him for half a second before catching herself, pride flaring again, and he pretended not to notice the slip, which somehow felt kinder than acknowledging it.
“I’m fine to stay here, Remo,” she argued.
