Chapter 20
Delilah Barrinheart
I wake to the soft scrape of sunlight across my eyelids, the room quiet except for the faint hum of the base in the distance.
For a second, I don’t remember where I am.
My chest rises and falls, heart still a little too fast, and I lie there in that blurred space between sleep and waking, waiting for memory to catch me like a tide.
It does.
Not all at once. Not in one clean hit. It comes in pieces.
The weight of sheets tangled low around my legs.
The ache in my ribs that is no longer just injury but aftermath.
The low burn between my thighs, the kind that makes heat crawl up my throat because it doesn’t belong to fear.
Then the scent reaches me—cigar smoke sunk into fabric, that sharp clean trace of soap, the unmistakable scent of him—and suddenly my whole body remembers before my mind fully catches up.
Jon.
Last night.
His hands bracketing my face in the dark. His voice asking, not taking. The way his mouth moved over mine like he was trying to ground both of us at once. The way my body, for once, didn’t flinch. Didn’t freeze. Didn’t go somewhere else.
My stomach twists. Not with regret. Not exactly. Something more complicated than that. Something heavier. More dangerous.
It wasn’t a dream.
I press the heels of my palms to my eyes for a second, breathing through the flood of it.
I should feel wrecked by what it means. I should feel ashamed.
I should feel guilty enough to choke on it.
Instead, what I feel most is the dull, impossible relief that it happened and didn’t break me.
That I wanted it. That I chose it. That for a handful of hours in the dark, my body belonged to me again.
That realization is almost scarier than the night itself.
I push myself upright, tossing the blankets aside, letting the evidence of him and me and everything that happened fade into the edges of the day before it can swallow me whole.
I can’t dwell. Not now. Not when there are worse things waiting.
Not when this morning isn’t just a morning—it’s a setup.
A stage. A target dressed like a birthday party.
The briefing came through last night. The man who held me, who tore everything apart, is back in play.
Mikhail is still moving, still calculating, still alive.
There’s no room for regret or lingering desire or the dangerous, tender ache of remembering Jon bare-chested in the dark saying my name like it mattered. There’s no room for waking up soft.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and force myself into motion.
My kit is already laid out in pieces, half practical, half camouflage.
I move through it methodically now, hands steady because fear sharpens focus like a blade when you don’t let it turn on you first. Every strap, every weapon, every hidden blade, every backup comm falls into place with the precision of someone who knows exactly what’s coming—or at least knows how to pretend she does.
I pause over the dress draped on my chair.
White.
Of course it’s white. Soft. Sweet. Harmless.
The kind of dress that belongs at a country club brunch with old money and polished smiles, not on a woman walking into a room that could become a kill box if the wrong man breathes in the wrong direction.
It looks too innocent for the storm I’m walking into, but that’s exactly why it works.
Mikhail expects symbolism. He expects theatre.
He expects family events to soften people.
He expects wrong.
I pull the dress over my head, smooth it down my hips, and stare at myself in the mirror.
For one strange second, I almost look like someone who exists outside of violence.
A girl whose father is proud of her for all the right reasons.
A woman going to a birthday celebration instead of a possible ambush. The illusion is good enough to hurt.
Almost.
Then the knock comes. Hard. Urgent. No hesitation.
I barely have time to reach for the door before it swings open.
Jon steps inside like he owns the space—which, for once, he almost does—and before I can blink he’s got my bags in his hands.
He smells like clean cotton, coffee, and whatever sharp, outdoor scent always clings to him like the base itself branded him years ago and never let go.
His jaw is set, hair still slightly damp from a shower, sleeves rolled already like he’s been up for hours. Of course he has.
His eyes flick over me once. Quick. Controlled. Not lingering. Somehow that’s worse. Somehow that one carefully restrained glance says more than if he’d stared.
“I’ll meet you in the car,” he says, voice clipped, eyes sharp but scanning. No smile, no pause. Command first. Always.
I blink at him. “Good morning to you too.”
His mouth twitches, almost a smile, but it doesn’t quite land. “Morning.”
“That sounded painful.”
“It is,” he says, hefting the bags. “I haven’t had enough caffeine to survive you yet.”
That gets the smallest laugh out of me, quick and unwilling. He catches it, and something in his face eases for half a second before the mask drops back into place.
I nod, still tugging at my dress, trying not to think about the memory of last night pressing at my temples.
I follow him, careful to keep a step behind, watching how he moves, reading his shoulders, the tilt of his head, the way his jaw tightens when he’s thinking faster than he lets on.
Every detail of him draws my attention, but I force it down, forcing myself back to the mission at hand.
Back to Mikhail. Back to my father. Back to the fact that this day could go wrong in a hundred ways before lunch.
Quietly, almost without meaning to, I murmur to myself, the words lost in the space between us, too soft to be anything but confession. “It should never have happened.”
Jon laughs. Just a short, sharp sound, but it carries all the weight it should. Not amused. Not cruel. More like he knows exactly what I mean and hates how true it is. He keeps walking, but I see his shoulders shift.
“You planning on making that a formal statement?” he asks dryly.
I stare at the back of his head. “Were you supposed to hear that?”
“No.”
“Then pretend you didn’t.”
“Can’t,” he says. “Selective hearing isn’t one of my skills.”
I clamp my mouth shut, forcing the line of thought away. There’s no room for it. Not now. Not when the night could become a distraction that costs more than I’m willing to risk.
Jon doesn’t feed into it after that. He just carries the bags, sliding open the door to the car and holding it for me.
His grin is small, controlled, almost teasing—but I see it.
Beneath the surface, hesitation. Not regret exactly, but the kind of calculation that comes from knowing the consequences of every choice and making it anyway.
I step into the car, adjusting my dress, smoothing my hair, forcing myself to exhale. The world is waiting, and for now, so is Jon—but the storm is close, and we both know it.
I slide into the passenger seat, the leather still cool against my bare arms. The sun hasn’t fully climbed, and the world outside the windshield is quiet, almost lazy, like it has no idea what kind of day it’s about to become.
The club is a drive away. The party is a trap wrapped in ribbons.
My father is expecting his daughter. Mikhail may be expecting blood.
My hands go instinctively for my phone—I’ve got a playlist ready, something to fill the silence on the ride and keep my nerves from twisting into knots—but Jon’s hand shoots out before I can swipe.
“Not today,” he says, voice low but sharp. His fingers flick mine, and I jerk back, startled.
“What—?”
He doesn’t even look guilty. “Trust me.”
“That phrase has been doing a lot of heavy lifting lately,” I mutter.
His mouth pulls to one side. “Still not wrong.”
Before I can argue, he plugs in his own device, and a soft strumming begins, gentle and familiar. It takes me all of two seconds to recognize it.
I turn slowly toward him. “No.”
He grins without looking at me. “Yes.”
“Jonathan.”
“Delilah.”
“‘Hey There Delilah’?” I ask, incredulous, even as warmth blooms in my chest so fast it catches me off guard. “You cannot be serious.”
He finally glances at me, smug as hell. “You’ve been quiet enough for one morning.”
“Oh my God.”
Then he starts singing.
His voice is low, smooth, but carrying that little rough edge that makes it all his own.
He doesn’t overdo it. Doesn’t turn it into a performance.
He sings like he’s telling me a secret badly disguised as a joke.
The words, the hum between verses, the easy confidence of it—it’s intimate in a way that feels almost unfair.
Like he knows exactly what he’s doing and is pretending not to.
I blink against the sudden surprise of how… normal it feels. How safe it is. How easy it would be to sit in this moment and let him make me forget the rest of the world exists for three minutes and fourteen seconds.
I laugh before I realize I’m doing it, a light, unguarded sound that surprises me even more than him singing. My shoulders loosen, the tight coil of worry inside me unwinding just enough to let the song in.
“You’re really doing this,” I say, shaking my head, but there’s a grin tugging at my lips I can’t hide fast enough.
He keeps driving, one hand on the wheel, the other tapping the beat against the console. “What, you thought I was gonna let you sit there and overthink in silence?”
“I can overthink with music too.”
“Not with this music.”
I snort. “This is emotional blackmail.”
“This,” he says, singing the next line under his breath before speaking again, “is morale management.”
“That’s not a real term.”
“It is if I say it like I believe it.”