8. Killian
KILLIAN
A creak above makes my eyes snap open. I’m moving before I’m fully awake, my hand searching for a blade that isn't there.
Prison will do that to you, it doesn't just wash off. You stay on the edge of the mattress, listening. In there, if something wakes you up, it’s usually because someone is coming to kill you.
The house is silent except for her. I glance at the monitor. A small, repurposed handheld the program handlers think is a dead piece of hardware. I bypassed their local encryption on my second night here. On the grainy feed, her bedroom door is already open. A dark rectangle in a sea of grey.
The uneven tread of her feet against the floorboards upstairs tells me she’s as restless as I am. Twenty-one days in this house, but tonight is different. It’s been hours since the gym. Hours since I tasted her. Neither of us can find sleep.
The footsteps move toward the stairs, and I make my decision.
Sliding out of bed, I drag on some sweats and move silently through the hallway.
The ankle monitor blinks green against my skin.
A digital leash. Proof that they still think they can control me.
What they’ll never understand is that I’m more dangerous here, in her space, than I ever was behind bars.
I find her at the kitchen island, staring into the black beyond the glass.
She’s in a thin ribbed vest and pyjama pants, her auburn hair spilling over her shoulders in loose curls.
I stop in the doorway, drinking her in. For a beat, I forget to breathe.
She looks exposed. A dangerous way to stand in a room with a man like me.
My eyes track the line of her spine. I count the vertebrae through the thin fabric. Seven. Maybe eight. The heat radiates off her even from here. It would take one step to close the distance. One hand to pin her against the counter and hold her and—
Fuck.
I shift. This is going to be a problem.
I want to step up behind her, slide those pyjama pants down and press her against that counter.
That part's stayed the same. Everything else has gotten complicated.
She keeps doing that, complicating things without knowing she's doing it.
Three weeks of her asking questions nobody's ever bothered to ask.
She believes in redemption. Not as a theory.
She believes it the way you only believe something when you've staked your whole life on it being true.
And she looks at me like I'm proof she's right.
Like the man sitting across from her is worth the gamble.
I didn't plan for that.
Yesterday in the gym. The kiss. The way she looked at me afterwards, not scared. Just honest. That look said she felt it too, and she knew it, and it cost her something to admit it. Even just to herself.
The plan was simple. Get close, get in, take what I came for, walk away. I've run that operation a hundred times.
I still want her. That hasn't changed.
What's changed is I don't know what walking away looks like anymore.
Blood rushes south. My cock is hard from watching her drink tea. Seven years in a cell, and apparently that's what it takes now.
Pathetic.
And I don’t give a fuck.
“Couldn’t sleep either?” My question cuts through the quiet.
She startles, flinching slightly, she didn't hear me come in. The flush wraps around her throat before she's got her face back under control.
“Seems not.” She keeps her focus on the mug. “Tea seemed like a better idea than tossing and turning.”
I move closer. No retreat this time. Progress. She felt it yesterday, and she knows I know. The mug is just something to look at that isn't me.
“Mind if I join you? Prison leaves a body clock that doesn't shut off.”
She nods toward the kettle. “Help yourself.”
Silence falls, only the ceramic clinks and the low whistle of the kettle break the quiet. This is what I didn't account for. Not the want, fuck, the want's always been there. But her like this, in the quiet, no mask on. Just her. It's intimate. I don't do intimate.
“I always think about my father,” she says suddenly, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Nights like this, I remember how he used to work late. I’d sneak downstairs for water and see the light under his door.”
Hearing his name makes my pulse spike. I focus on the steam rising from her mug, the way it curls like smoke.
Anything to drown out the memory of his skull giving way under my knuckles.
I’m aware of the pinhole camera in the corner of the range hood, the one recording my 'rehabilitation.' The Board thinks they’re watching a predator being tamed. They have no idea I’m just refining the kill.
I’ve been lying about what I did to her father for a long time. I can do it for another five minutes.
“You were close?”
“He was… everything after my mother died. My mentor. My inspiration. My everything.” She stares into her tea, lost in memory. “He believed so deeply in redemption, in the possibility that people could change. That’s why his work threatened certain… organizations.”
I go still. “Organizations?”
“He was investigating connections between unsolved murders and organized crime. Building profiles of assassins.” Her fingers tighten around her mug.
"He thought if they understood how men like that were wired, they could stop the next one. He was found dead the night of a charity gala. Heart attack, they said. I never believed it.”
Shit.
Her digging is exactly why the Order marked her. I’ve buried three cleaners in the last year just to keep her breath in her lungs. She thinks she’s chasing answers; all she’s done is paint a target on her back.
Dr. Hart died trying to understand men like me. And now his daughter is in her kitchen at 3:30 AM, sharing tea with his killer.
“That sounds like dangerous work,” I say, keeping my voice steady.
“It was. He received threats and even had to hire security. But he wouldn’t stop. Said some truths were worth the risk.” Her voice catches. “He was found slumped over his desk while the gala was still in full swing. No warning. No history of heart issues.” Her voice catches.
“Why not?”
“He was healthy. He was excited about his speech that night. It didn’t make sense. I asked for a postmortem, but the coroner signed it off without one." She looks at me, "I’ve been digging for years. Every time it feels like I'm close, I hit a wall."
“I’m sorry. Losing a parent that way… it must have been devastating.” I say it because it’s the only truth I have for her. I know exactly how devastating it was. I watched it happen.
I want to tell her everything. That I watched her at that gala in the emerald dress.
That her father was holding her photo when I hit him.
That I chose rage over the Order's needle, and I’ve been sabotaging their contracts ever since, killing the men they send to finish what I started.
But I can’t. The truth would empty her out.
And if I’m not here as her ghost, the Order moves in.
“It changed everything. My work, my focus, even where I live. I bought this place partly because I needed somewhere that felt safe, but also because I wanted to honor his work. He believed in second chances, in the possibility of redemption even for the worst of us.”
Redemption, even for the worst of us.
She has no idea she’s offering it to the person who took him from her. I look around the kitchen, the white shaker cabinets and the stone counters Gregory Hart’s death bought for her. This entire sanctuary is the dividend of his murder. Now, I’m the only one who knows the true cost of her safety.
“Is that why you do this?” I ask. “For him?”
“Every person I help, it’s for him. It’s proof that his beliefs were right, that his death wasn’t meaningless.”
“What about you?” she asks, shifting in her seat and taking a sip of her tea. “Was there anyone who saw you as more than… this?”
The question catches me off guard. Most people want to hear about the wreck. No one asks about the parts that weren't broken yet.
“My grandmother.” I haven’t said the name out loud in a decade. “She died when I was nine. Cancer.”
I don't talk about the foster homes or the beatings. I don't tell her that her letters were the only thing that kept me from going feral in those months before she died.
“She used to say our worst moments don’t define us. It’s what we do after.”
Ellie’s face softens.
Grandma Rose was wrong. So was Ellie’s father. He believed in second chances. I didn't give him one. Look where that got him.
“Killian,” she says. Hearing my name from her is a problem I’m starting to enjoy. “Yesterday... what happened in the gym—”
“Was against the rules,” I cut in. I’m giving her the professional out she’s supposed to take. “That’s what you were going to say?”
Her lips part, then she pulls at her bottom lip with her teeth, undecided. She looks like she’s working something out.
“No,” she admits. “I was going to say it scared me. Not because it was wrong, but because I let it happen, and for a second, it almost felt right.”
Her admission hits me harder than the kiss did. She’s giving me an opening. I could take it. I could keep pushing until I’ve got her exactly where she wants to be.
The plan was simple: stay in the shadows and keep her alive.
I was supposed to look for an opening to disappear, nothing else.
But the second I touched her in the gym, the restraint broke.
I didn’t just want to protect her anymore; I wanted to claim her so completely that she’d never look for a way back to the light.
I don't have a lie ready for this.
“It felt right to me, too. It’s the only thing I’ve thought about since.”
She sets her mug down and steps into my space. Her hand slides over mine on the counter, pinning it to the granite. Just like that, I'm hard all over again.
Pathetic. One touch and I’m a fucking horny teenager.
I don’t move. If I do, I’ll pull her in. I’m walking a fine line between being the safety she thinks she’s found and the nightmare I’m starting to wish I wasn’t.