She needs rest.
Be good.
Just be fucking good for her.
Sweat drips down my spine as I drop into another set of shadow work, fists cutting the air, elbows sharp, knees driving up like I’m trying to murder the quiet itself. The burn in my muscles is good. Familiar. A language my body understands better than tenderness.
Then I hear it. A soft scrape outside the apartment door. Barely there. The kind of sound most people would dismiss as the building settling or a neighbor walking past. But I’m not most people.
My body locks mid-motion. The killer in me snaps awake instantly, instincts honed by thirteen years of survival flooding every nerve. My heart rate doesn’t spike—it drops, steady and cold. I’m already moving, silent as death across the hardwood.
The karambit is exactly where I left it, and in one fluid motion it’s in my hand, the curved steel an extension of my arm. Cool. Familiar. Ready.
I cross the room like smoke, every instinct screaming. Sophia is still asleep behind me, breathing deep and trusting, completely unaware. Good. I want her unaware. I want her safe.
The door is two steps away when Ian’s low, lazy drawl filters through the wood.
“Is anyone naked in here?”
The tension bleeds out of my shoulders in a single breath, but I don’t loosen my grip on the blade. Not yet. Old habits die harder than men. I crack the door just enough to meet his smug face.
He arches a brow at the karambit still clenched in my fist. “Morning, sunshine. You planning to carve me up before coffee, or are we feeling civilized today?”
“You were one second away from holding your intestines in your arms, jackass.”
Ian makes this dramatic show of swooning. “God, I love it when you talk dirty to me.” He strolls inside like he owns the place, carrying a paper bag that smells like fresh croissants and butter. His gaze drifts past me to the bedroom where Sophia sleeps curled under the sheet, hair wild, one bare shoulder exposed.
He smirks. “She’s still breathing. Bold of you.”
“Shut up.” I step into the gap and pull the bedroom door closed behind me.
Ian sets the bag down and leans against the counter, arms crossed. “Have you lost weight?”
I frown.
“You look like hell. Sleep at all?”
“No.”
“Did you at least lethersleep?”
I don’t answer. The silence does it for me.
He chuckles quietly. “I’ll put some Liquid IV on the grocery list.”
I glance at the closed bedroom door, then nod toward the balcony. While I’m distracted by Ian, I might as well make sure she gets some quality rest because she’s gonna need it later.
Ian follows me out, croissant already in hand, completely unbothered by the early hour or the fact that I nearly put a karambit through his throat thirty seconds ago.
He drops into his chair. Takes a bite. Chews. Looks at Paris like it owes him something. “Talk to me about the last three months.”
I look at him.
“I've been in Paris, Reth. Completely cut off. I need to know enough to do my job.” A beat. “Give me that.”
That's the right framing, and he knows it. Just enough. He's not asking me to unpack it. He's asking for what he needs to protect her. Which means I give him the operational picture and nothing else. The personal cost of it stays where it belongs—inside the walls of whatever I've become inside Valeria's orbit.
“I haven’t been able to get Mary and Samuel.”
