Chapter 29
Killian
She’s in the other room putting the butterfly knife into the leather case I gave her. I’m alone in the kitchen with the message and seventy-two hours to decide if the woman I’m falling for lives or dies.
I read it again. My hand doesn’t shake, but it wants to.
The stitches pull when I shift — a constant reminder that her fingers were inside my wound twelve hours ago. She marked me. She stitched me together and Silas is coming to tear us both apart.
I set the phone face down on the counter and my mind goes tactical.
How did he find us? The Harlow kill was clean but not invisible.
Bodies leave trails. Conference attendance records, hotel security footage, the contractors I neutralized on the access road — any of those could have flagged in a network Silas has spent thirty years building.
I got sloppy. The sleep deprivation, the wound, the distraction of her mouth and her hands and the way she says my name.
I got sloppy because I was watching her instead of watching the perimeter.
He didn’t say anything about killing me. That’s intentional. He doesn’t want me dead — he wants me back. Compliant. His weapon, recalibrated. The girl eliminated and the dog returned to its master.
Over my dead body.
I should handle this alone. Solo operations. No variables, no liabilities, no one to worry about except the target and the exit. I could tell her to run — give her a new identity and a city where no one knows her name — and handle Silas myself. Cut her loose so she’s not caught in the blast radius.
The old programming screams it. Emotions are leverage. Attachments are weaknesses. You can’t protect people by keeping them close.
But the woman in the next room isn’t the doll I found on a balcony.
She carved a moth into her first kill because she wanted a signature.
She stitched my wound with steadier hands than I ever had.
She held a gun while I slept. She’s not a liability.
She’s the most capable person I’ve ever worked with.
But there’s the other thing — the thing that eats at me more than Silas’s message.
If he digs deep enough, he’ll find the Ghost connection.
The DMs. The months of messages before the contract ever landed on my desk.
He’ll realize I was talking to the target’s daughter long before I was hired to take her.
And he’ll use it. He’ll show her. He’ll tear the mask off in the ugliest way possible, as punishment, as leverage, and as proof that I’m no different from Malachi — a man who kept her in a cage of lies.
“Killian?”
I didn’t hear her approach. Sloppy. She’s standing across the counter in one of my shirts that’s too big for her — falling off one shoulder, the collar exposing her collarbone. The mark I left on her neck is still there. Mine.
“What did the message say?”
I could lie. One more shouldn’t matter. But she’s looking at me the way she looked at my wound — she can see the damage underneath.
“We need to talk.”
She gestures me toward her bedroom. Not the kitchen, not the living room. Her space, where the sheets smell like both of us now.
“Sit down. I need to check your stitches first.”
“I’m fine.”
“Killian. Sit.”
I pull the shirt over my head, and the cold air hits my skin. She kneels beside me — not between my legs, beside them. She’s so careful not to destroy me completely.
Her knee presses against my thigh to get a better angle, and the little distance that existed disappears. Her fingers are cold when they touch the wound. I feel each one individually — index, middle, ring — tracing the suture line, checking for any sign of infection.
“You heal fast. Stitches look good.”
“I’ve had practice.”
“I know.”
She disinfects the area, then she leans closer and blows on it gently to dry the antiseptic. Her breath hits my bare skin and every muscle in my abdomen clenches. Her hand flattens over the wound — not examining, just holding.
“You’re tense.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re lying.” Her eyes come up to mine. “What did the message say?”
Her hand is on my wound. Her knee is against my thigh. She’s wearing my shirt and the bite mark on her neck is visible. Silas is coming to kill her and I’m sitting here with her fingers on my stitches, and I can’t separate any of it.
“Silas found us.”
She doesn’t pull away. Her hand stays on my wound, and her eyes stay on mine.
“Tell me.”
“He knows we’re in Europe. He knows about Harlow. He gave me a deadline — seventy-two hours to finish the original job.” I let that land. “Which means if I don’t kill you, he sends someone who will.”
“How did he find us?”
“The Harlow kill left traces. Or there’s a leak. I don’t know yet.”
“How many people does he have?”
“Enough.”
“Lisbon is compromised. We need to move.”
“I have a location,” I say. “Off grid. We can regroup there and plan.”
She nods. Her brain is already solving the problem. “Then we have three days.”
Partnership. The word lands in my chest with a weight that’s becoming familiar.
“You’re not afraid.”
“I’m terrified.” Her hand is still on my wound. “But fear doesn’t help. Action does. He won’t take me, Killian.”
“I know.”
“No.” She leans closer. Her forehead is almost touching mine. “You don’t. I mean it. He won’t take me. I won’t let him and neither will you.”
Her eyes are locked on mine and the proximity is overwhelming — her breath, her warmth, and the conviction in her voice that has no business existing in a woman who just learned a trained killer with an army is hunting her.
“I trust you, Killian.”
The guilt detonates.
She trusts me. She trusts Killian but she doesn’t know Killian is Ghost. She trusts incomplete information dressed up as a person.
Tell her. Right now. Tell her.
“I trust us,” she finishes.
The words crack something inside me.
“I thought I was supposed to protect you, my fierce Little Moth,” I whisper, taking a strand of her hair between my fingers. The deflection tastes like ash on my tongue.
She finishes the wound care, and then curls into my healthy side, with her head on my shoulder, and her hand on my chest. My arm wraps around her, pulling her closer.
We’ve done this before but tonight feels different.
Silas is coming. Tomorrow, we run. The seventy-two hours are ticking inside my chest like a second heartbeat and every minute I spend holding her instead of packing is a minute stolen from survival, but I need these hours.
I need them the way I need the stitches — to hold myself together until morning.
“Ivy?”
“Yes?”
“Is that my shirt?”
There’s a moment of silence before she talks. “You gave it to me in Zurich. Does it bother you?”
Bother me? You’re wrapped in something that touched my skin before it touched yours. I can smell myself on you.
“No. But I gave it to you to change into. Once.”
“It’s comfortable.” She melts deeper into me. Her lips find the side of my neck, resting on my pulse point. “And it smells like you.”
Four words. She says them like they’re nothing. Like they’re not the most devastating thing anyone’s ever said to me.
“Keep it.”
“I was planning to.”
Her legs wrap around my waist and I’m hard. I’ve been hard since she told me to sit, and she can feel it, but neither of us is pretending otherwise.
If I’m burning then you burn with me, Little Moth.
I trace slow circles on her hip with my thumb.
Small and deliberate, the pad of my finger following the edge of the fabric where cotton meets skin.
She shivers against me. I can feel her breath change against my neck — deeper, less controlled.
I trace the same path again, slower, and her thighs tighten around my waist.
I could push this. She wants me to. But Silas is coming, the lie is still between us and if I take her tonight, on stolen hours, with secrets in my mouth, I’ll never forgive myself.
I will burn in every hell there is for only telling her the half-truth. For holding her while the lie sits between us like a third body in the bed. For wanting her so badly it’s rearranging the shape of my chest. For knowing that the woman sleeping on me trusts a version of me that’s not complete.
I stay awake and memorize her silhouette against my body, the weight of her, the warmth, and the way she fits against me like something designed for this exact position.
I don’t know if we’ll survive what’s coming, and if we don’t, I want the last thing I remember to be the way she felt in my arms on the night before everything burned.