“You want to tell me why my house looks like Martha Stewart’s panic room?” I said, shoveling bacon into my mouth.
Shivs shrugged, taking a sip straight from the carafe. “Club’s got standards. We don’t leave family in the shit.”
He cracked a phone open with a precision screwdriver, never looking down. “You’re not safe. Not even close. Last night’s hit was a first volley. There’ll be more.”
“Who hired them?” I asked, voice sharper than I wanted.
He smiled, not at me but at the phone as he pulled out a SIM card. “Professional. Not cartel, not federal. Best guess is a shell company—out of Illinois, maybe Jersey. All routed through burner emails and dead-end LLCs.”
He reached across, grabbed my phone off the counter, and placed it next to the gutted corpses of the others. “Marcus Ellery,” he said. “Your board’s power broker. All roads lead back to him, even if you can’t see the fingerprints.”
I stopped chewing. “Marcus wouldn’t—he’s a snake, sure, but he doesn’t do wet work.”
“Doesn’t have to,” Shivs replied. “He outsources. That’s how your kind plays the game.”
He caught the way I flinched at “your kind” and gave me a look, half apology and half challenge. “You want the real, or you want the polite version?”
“The real.”
“Alright. Marcus Ellery works as a consultant for the Bourbon Heritage Alliance. The hit came from their security fund—deep background, corporate warfare. They clean up loose ends before they go public. You’re a liability.”
The room was too quiet. Even the appliances seemed to be listening.
I took another gulp of coffee, steadier now. “I should call the police.”
He laughed, sharp and low. “You do that, you’re the one in cuffs. They’ll say you hired me to kill those men. The bodies are gone, but the story sticks.”
“My prints—my house—” I started.
“Scrubbed. The club’s cleaner handled it. No evidence left but the rumors.”
It was too much. I stood, nearly knocking over the chair. “So I’m just supposed to sit here, let Ellery finish the job?”
He stood, mirroring me across the island. He was a full head taller, the kind of tall that looked like it hurt to pack into a car or a suit. The muscles in his chest bunched as he leaned forward, hands flat on the marble.
“You want to go to war with a man like that, you need allies,” he said, voice low. “You think the bourbon families play fair? They’ll ruin you before you even hit the front page.”
I stared at the counter, at the scatter of phones and tools. Each time I looked up, I found myself tracking the scars on his forearms, the strange symmetry of damage and healing. I hated the way it made me feel—like I was staring at a weapons cache and wanting to touch every piece.
I managed a breath. “You’re not a bodyguard.”
He shrugged. “No. I’m worse.”
I tried to think of a comeback, but my brain got stuck on the word “worse,” the way he’d said it like a confession. My eyes dropped, not by choice, and I caught the line of his abs, the way the jeans hung off his hips—barely legal, and not at all accidental.
He noticed, and the corner of his mouth twitched. I blushed, hating myself for it.
He straightened, walking around the island. “You ever think of leaving all this?” he asked, not unkind.
“Every day.” I tried to turn the words into a joke, but it came out too soft.
He poured me another coffee, this time adding a slug of bourbon from the bottle on the counter. “Don’t. That’s what he wants. He’s trying to smoke you out, make you panic.”
He slid the mug to me, close enough that our fingers brushed. His hand lingered for a second, thumb grazing my knuckles before he pulled away. Static shot up my arm, or maybe it was adrenaline, or maybe just hunger in a new and dangerous form.
I drank, the heat mixing with the burn of the whiskey. “What happens now?” I said.
Shivs set the phone down, finally meeting my eyes. His gaze was predatory—not cruel, but searching, the way a wolf might measure the distance before a leap.
