Chapter 13
Raze
Tone found me in my office and entered like she always did—without asking, without knocking, like the rules were for everyone else, and she was the exemption.
She shut the door behind her and stood there for a moment, arms folded, expression unusually tight. I could feel her displeasure coming on, and it was aimed directly at me. Which meant something had happened.
“She won’t come out of her room,” Tone lashed out.
I didn’t look up from the file on my desk. “Who?” I couldn’t keep the disinterest out of my voice.
Tone’s stare sharpened. “Don’t do that. You know exactly who.”
I set the paper down carefully, as if patience could keep irritation from bleeding into my voice. “She’s in her room?”
“She’s been in her room,” Tone corrected. “And she looks like she wants to crawl out of her own skin.”
My jaw tightened. Guilt was a useful emotion when it didn’t turn into paralysis. But guilt wasn’t the same thing as responsibility, and Izzy had always struck me as the kind of woman who would take responsibility for things that were never hers to carry.
Tone stepped closer. “Raze,” she was softer now. “Let her go.”
I leaned back in my chair, eyes narrowing. “No.”
“Stop.” Tone planted her hands on my desk like she was about to deliver a verdict. “She’s not a threat. You know that.”
“You don’t know what I know.”
Tone’s mouth pulled into a line. “Then tell me.”
I held her gaze.
“Her boyfriend Nathan Azzopardi is a Nato family mule.”
Tone’s expression morphed—subtle, but real. Disgust. Anger. Then something closer to pity, which I hated seeing on her.
“She didn’t know, Raze. She couldn’t. This has devastated her.”
“She still ended up with him.” The words were cold, harsh, when all Tone was doing was defending her new friend.
And all Izzy had been guilty of was falling for the wrong man.
“And that’s what worries me. Not that she’s part of it—I know she’s not.
It’s that she’s the kind of girl a man like that can circle back to when he’s desperate. ”
Tone’s eyes hardened. “You think she’s that weak?”
“I think she’s human,” I corrected.
That earned a sharp, humorless laugh. “Says the man who built his life out of damage.”
I stared at her.
She stared right back, fearless as ever. Tone had never been afraid of my temper. She’d grown up with it. She’d seen me when I was younger—when violence came easier than grief and restraint.
“She’s ashamed, Raze. Not just upset. Ashamed. And she’s alone in that room thinking every bad choice she ever made led her here.”
I didn’t respond.
Tone softened her tone, but not her stance. “Let her go home. Let her breathe. She’s no danger to you.”
The words were too easy to agree with. That was the problem.
Because danger wasn’t always visible. Sometimes danger was attachment. Familiarity. Getting used to a presence in your house—someone’s laugh, someone’s footsteps, someone’s voice cutting through the stillness like it belonged there.
Izzy had done that without trying.
She’d been a disruption. A nuisance. A complication.
And somewhere between her stubborn honesty and the way she refused to tremble on command, she’d become… constant. Like a small, steady heat I’d started accounting for without noticing.
Tone watched my face like she could read the answer before I spoke.
Her eyes narrowed. “You care.”
I scoffed. “Don’t start.”
“Oh, I’m starting.” Tone’s lips twitched. “You care.”
“I care that she’s been associated with a man like Nathan, because it puts her at risk.”
“Sure,” Tone nodded, unimpressed. “And you care purely out of public service.”
I shot her a warning look. “Tone.”
She leaned in, grin sharpening. “You like having her here.”
“That’s not—”
“She talks to you like you’re a regular person,” Tone continued, not letting me finish. “Not a monster. And it’s been so long since someone treated you that way. You like it.”
I felt something twist in my chest. Annoyance, yes—but also the ugly truth inside it.
Tone’s gaze didn’t move. “If you keep her here, she’ll start thinking she deserves it. That this is punishment. That she belongs in a cage because she loved the wrong man.”
The word cage scraped something raw in me.
I stood abruptly, the chair legs grinding against the floor.
Tone didn’t flinch. “Let her go. If you’re really worried about her ending up in his orbit again, then do something useful. Give her a way to call for help. Give her a safety net that isn’t a prison.”
A long beat passed. I hated that she was right. I hated it more that I was about to listen.
“Fine,” I relented. “I’ll take her home.”
Tone’s eyebrows lifted. “You’ll let her go?”
“I said I’d take her home,” I corrected. “That’s not the same thing.”
Tone’s smile returned, bright and smug. “Look at you,” she murmured. “Evolving.”
“Get out,” I told her.
She blew me a kiss and left the room knowing she’d won this round.
I didn’t move for a moment after the door shut. I stood there with my hands braced on the desk, staring at nothing, feeling something I didn’t like settling under my ribs.
Reluctance. Not about the decision. About what it would feel like afterward, when the house went silent again.
When I knocked on Izzy’s door, there was no answer.
I tried again, not louder, just firmer.
“Izzy.”
Silence.
“I’m taking you home,” I said through the door.
I heard the softest movement. A breath of air. Before the door opened slowly.
She stood there in one of the outfits Tone had brought—jeans, a pale top, hair still damp like she’d tried to wash the day off her skin. Her eyes were red-rimmed but dry. Like she’d cried earlier and refused to do it again.
She looked at me without defiance; shock and shame.
“You’re letting me go?” she enquired, voice rough.
“Yes.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Why?”
I didn’t answer with the truth. Because you don’t deserve to wither away in here. Because my sister shamed me into remembering you’re a person. Because I can’t decide whether keeping you is protection or possession.
Instead, something totally different emerged. “Because you’re not a threat.”
Her gaze flicked away. “You finally realized that?”
“I did.”
She held my eyes again, and I saw the part of her that still wanted to argue, to prove herself. But she was too tired.
“Pack your things. Fifteen minutes and I’ll take you home.”
She nodded once and stepped back.
While she moved around the room, folding clothes into a bag with hands that shook only slightly, I watched from the doorway. Not like a guard. Like a man trying not to feel something.
When she finished, she hesitated.
“Keep the clothes,” I told her, before she could speak. “All of them.”
Her brows knit. “Raze—”
“Don’t.” My voice cut clean through whatever she was about to say. “They’re yours. Consider it… compensation for inconvenience.”
Her mouth twitched, almost amused despite herself. “Inconvenience.”
“That’s what we’ll call it.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out her phone, holding it out to her. She hesitated before taking it, like the small device carried more weight than it should.
Her fingers hovered over the screen for a second too long. Then she unlocked it.
I understood the look on her face immediately. No missed calls. No messages. No frantic attempts to find her. Four days, and nothing. He hadn’t even tried.
I wondered, briefly, if this was the longest they’d ever gone without speaking. If she was used to constant check-ins, shallow apologies, small reassurances. If silence from him had once meant something. Now it meant nothing at all.
I didn’t let myself dwell on what that did to her—the realization that she could vanish from his life and he wouldn’t even notice.
A lump rose in her throat. I saw it move when she swallowed. She blinked hard, staring at the screen as if willing it to light up, as if willing him to prove he gave a damn.
It didn’t.
I kept my expression neutral, commanding.
My chest, however, felt anything but.
“Program my number into it,” I commanded.
Her eyes lifted, startled. “What?”
“Into your phone,” I repeated, tone clipped like it was a practical instruction and nothing else. “If he resurfaces. If you feel unsafe. You call me.”
A beat passed.
“Why?” she asked.
Because you don’t have anyone. Because I don’t trust the world with you. Because I’m not sure I can stop caring now that it’s started.
I didn’t say any of that.
“Because I can help.”
Her lips parted like she had something to say, but then she decided against it and typed my number in.
Saved it.
When she slipped the phone into her bag, she stood there for a moment, not moving.
The reluctance was faint but unmistakable. Like part of her wanted to stay—not because she felt safe, but because leaving meant stepping back into the life where Nathan existed. Where consequences lived. Where she didn’t know what was waiting in her apartment.
I watched her struggle with it.
She didn’t speak.
Neither did I.
“Let’s go,” I said finally.
She nodded and followed.
We drove in silence. She sat in the passenger seat with her hands folded in her lap, eyes on the road, jaw tight. She didn’t look at me until we pulled up outside her building.
The streetlights made everything look washed out. Ordinary.
She didn’t move to get out right away.
“You’ll tell Tone I’m sorry I couldn’t wait for her to get back to say goodbye?” she prompted, voice low.
I glanced at her. “I’ll tell her. I’m sure she’ll swing past to see you tomorrow.”
For a second, neither of us moved.
Then she opened the door and stepped out.
I watched her climb the stairs and disappear inside, bag slung over her shoulder, head held high even though I knew she was shaking on the inside.
When the door shut behind her, something in my chest tightened. The silence that followed wasn’t relief. It was absence. And it hit me—sharp and unwanted—that letting her go might have been the right decision… but it was going to cost me anyway.