9. Ellie #3
My hands tremble as I stare at the screen.
My father. The words drag me straight back to that night, the one wound I’ve never been able to close.
Someone knows. The late nights I’ve spent combing through my father’s old case files, the calls I’ve made to his former colleagues.
Since hiring the investigator eight weeks ago, I’ve found inconsistencies in my father’s autopsy report.
I’ve been piecing together fragments that suggest his death wasn’t the heart attack everyone believed. Someone has been watching.
“What is it?” Killian asks, his tone sharpening the second he feels the shift in me.
“They know what I’ve been digging into,” I whisper. “And they want me to stop.”
I turn the phone so he can see. The transformation takes half a second.
The man who just fucked me into oblivion disappears, replaced by something cold and devastating.
A predator assessing a threat. This is the man who killed for money.
This is the man I should have been afraid of from day one.
My pulse kicks up for an entirely different reason.
“Who is this from?” His voice is too calm.
“I don’t know… there’s no number.” My voice holds, even though my hands won’t stop shaking. “It could be anyone who read about my father, just… trying to scare me.”
“No.” The word cuts me off like a blade. “This isn’t some prank, Ellie. It’s aimed. Someone knows you’ve been digging, and they are pissed off.”
“How can you be so sure?” His certainty makes my stomach drop.
He watches me for a long moment, weighing something.
“Because I know exactly how they work. They don’t just drop names by accident. Bringing up your father means they’re warning you to back off.”
“They?”
“You said you
father was following organized crime, unsolved murders. If he got too close—”
He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to. The thought hits me like ice water: my father’s death might not have been natural. If that’s true, then someone has been watching me, waiting to see if I’d take the same path.
“I need to call the police,” I say, reaching for my phone.
“No.” His hand clamps over mine, stopping me cold. “Not yet. Give me time to make a few calls first.”
“Calls?” The word comes out too high, my voice betraying me. “Killian… if you know something—”
“I know the cops might already be in on it,” he cuts in. “Your father was investigating organised crime. You said it yourself. Calling them is the worst thing you could do. Give me twenty-four hours. I’ll find out who sent this.”
I should say no. I should insist on procedure, on trusting the system I’ve always put my faith in. But the tone and certainty in his voice, the way he went into protection mode the moment he saw that message, tells me he knows more about this world than any ex-con ever should.
“Promise me you’ll be careful,” I say instead. “Promise me you won’t do anything reckless.”
“You’re worried about me?”
“Of course I am, despite what that file says. Despite every logical reason I shouldn’t care, I do. I’m worried.”
Something shifts in his face. But it’s the truth. I am worried about him. And the message only shows me how much I could lose.
“I’ll be careful,” he says. “But someone is watching you. You stay in my sight, Ellie. No more taking chances on your own. From now on, you’re staying right here where I can see you until I find out who's behind this.”
“No. I’m not living my life out of fear,” I cut in. “Anonymous threats won't intimidate me. If someone thinks they can scare me away from the truth about my father, they’ve chosen the wrong person.”
“Stubborn,” he says, his gaze heavy on me.
“Determined.”
“A dangerous mix in a woman like you.”
“What kind of woman am I?”
He studies me for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is rough, almost reluctant. “The kind who doesn’t run. The kind who looks at damage and still believes she can fix it. The kind who makes a man want to try to be better than he is.”
I feel tears pressing at the back of my eyes.
“Killian—”
“I should make those calls,” he says, pushing to his feet. But before he leaves, he leans down, his hand cupping my face with surprising gentleness. “We’ll figure this out, Ellie. I promise you, whoever sent that message won’t touch you. And they’ll regret ever trying.”
His thumb drags across my cheekbone, and instead of steadying me, it makes everything inside me shake harder.
Then he’s gone, leaving me alone in my office with the text still burning in my hand. I should be terrified. Instead, I can’t stop touching the place on my cheek where his hand had been. I just fucked my patient.
Let me rephrase that: I just had the best sex of my life with a convicted killer who might be connected to my father’s murder.
I stay on the couch, wrapped in his hoodie. My career is over. The wall I built over ten years didn’t crack. It shattered.
And the thing that terrifies me most?
I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
God help me, I don’t care. About any of it. Not about anything except the way he made me feel alive for the first time in my life.
Some risks are worth taking.
This one is.