Chapter 27
T he door clicked shut behind Trevor, and the quiet that followed was deafening.
I stood there for a moment—just stood—watching the empty space where he’d been, like I could still feel the tension he left behind. I hadn’t asked him to come. Hadn’t wanted his warnings or his judgment. But now that he was gone, his words clung to me like smoke.
I turned toward the table.
The flash drive sat there like a loaded weapon. Small. Innocent. Humming with the kind of power that could undo everything.
I picked it up slowly, my fingers suddenly cold.
For a second, I almost didn’t plug it in. I hovered there, the drive in one hand, my laptop open and waiting, the air thick with hesitation. I could pretend I didn’t need to know. I could pretend I was the kind of woman who trusted what she felt more than what she feared.
But I wasn’t.
I needed to know who Ronan really was. Not just the man who drew me a bath. Who carried me in his arms. Who held my gaze like it was the only thing tethering him to Earth. I needed to know everything.
So, I plugged it in.
It opened with a quiet blink—just a simple folder directory. But what hid inside was anything but simple.
The first files I clicked weren’t labeled. Just timestamped video clips. I opened one.
Grainy surveillance footage filled the screen. A man—Ronan—approached a figure at a crowded street corner. There was a flash of something metallic. A struggle that didn’t last more than a second. The figure crumpled. Ronan didn’t even break stride.
Another file. A rooftop. A long-range rifle. A man in a suit getting out of a black car. Ronan’s breath audible in the mic feed—calm. Steady. One shot. Clean. The target dropped. Chaos erupted below, but Ronan was already gone.
More clips. More bodies. Some quick, efficient. Others more … intimate. A man tied to a chair, trembling. Ronan leaning in. A quiet exchange. A final breath.
Each video was a page in a book I didn’t know he’d written. A life I hadn’t asked to be part of.
He was a killer.
Not metaphorically. Not hypothetically.
A real, trained, deliberate killer.
And I’d begged to be ruined by him.
And then?—
More.
The folders were plain. A set of numerical dates, each paired with a single name: Lady. Lady. Lady.
What the fuck?
They stretched back years .
My throat tightened as I clicked the most recent one—nearly eighteen months before me.
Inside were photos.
A woman. Late twenties. Auburn hair. Pale skin. Wide-set eyes that reminded me of my own. She was beautiful. Not in a polished, magazine-cover way. But in that honest, quietly magnetic way that made you stare too long without meaning to.
She looked happy. Relaxed. In some of the images, she wore a silk blindfold. In others, she was laughing on what looked like a private beach. And then there were videos.
The kind of videos Ronan might’ve taken if he’d wanted to remember her forever.
Intimate.
Gentle.
And then … the last one.
I hesitated.
The thumbnail alone made my stomach turn. The angle was off. A static frame, as if the camera had been placed on the ground. The woman was curled in on herself, crying. Not sobbing. Not screaming. Just this low, wracked sound like her chest had caved in.
There were no words. No context.
Just pain.
And blood.
It took me a second to register the smear of it on the tile beside her. Dark. Sticky. Too much. I could hear her breathing—shallow, uneven—like her lungs were fighting for every inhale. Like her body was trying to decide whether it wanted to keep going.
She didn’t move.
Not even when someone stepped into frame—just boots, black and silent. The camera didn’t shake. The angle didn’t change. But I knew. Somehow, I just knew.
He’d been there.
And by the time the boots stepped out of frame again, she still hadn’t moved.
Still hadn’t made a sound.
I closed the video before it finished.
But it didn’t matter. The ending had already happened. She was gone.
And he had recorded it. Saved it. Filed it away like it was just another job.
I couldn’t breathe.
I backed away from the screen, my legs hitting the chair behind me, forcing me to sit. My hands were shaking. I stared at the screen, willing it to make sense. Wanting an explanation Ronan hadn’t given me. One he didn’t think I’d need.
She wasn’t me.
But she had been.
And he had let her go.
Or maybe … she didn’t make it.
Did the details even matter?
My stomach turned violently.
I’d always known Ronan was dangerous. It was part of the appeal. The unshakable calm. The sharp edges. The unspoken violence in his eyes. But I hadn’t expected this—this soft, secret past with another woman he’d also called Lady.
I wasn’t the first.
Not even close.
And that realization did something to me I hadn’t expected.
It broke something open.
Because what if I was just the next? What if I was just another fantasy in a long line of them? What if all that care—those reverent hands, those whispered words—what if it wasn’t real?
What if it was just the script?
My eyes burned.
I stood abruptly, pacing the room, needing to do something with the energy crawling under my skin. I pressed my fingers to my temples, then dragged them down my cheeks.
This wasn’t supposed to matter. I told myself I’d gone into this eyes open. That I knew the rules. But the truth was, I didn’t. Not really.
Because I’d fallen for him.
Hard.
And maybe I hadn’t wanted to know what came before me because I’d been afraid it would look like this.
So familiar.
So special.
So not special at all.
I thought about the woman crying in that last video. About the hollow ache in her voice. The way she held herself like she’d been destroyed by love. Or by the loss of it.
Had he hurt her?
Had he walked away?
Had she fallen in love with a man who was never hers to keep?
Was she dead?
A part of me wanted to call him. To scream. To demand answers.
But the deeper part—the more terrified part—was scared to hear them.
Because what if this was who he was? A man who gave women everything for a season. Until he didn’t. Until he vanished, or left them unraveling on a cold floor.
I pressed my palms to my eyes and breathed.
Deep. Slow. Controlled.
But I didn’t stop there.
I should have.
God, I should’ve shut the laptop and walked away. But something in me—some raw, splintered piece of pride or masochism or heartbreak—needed more. Needed proof that this wasn’t a one-time fluke. That I wasn’t imagining a pattern that didn’t exist.
So I clicked the folder beneath it.
Lady. Different date. Different year.
And another face.
This one was older. Early thirties, maybe.
Darker hair. A mischievous smirk caught mid-laugh.
She looked like she’d been teasing whoever was holding the camera, her bare shoulders glowing in the sun, salt clinging to her skin.
There were no videos in this folder. Just photos.
All taken over what looked like several months.
They were beautiful. Carefully framed. Tender in a way that made my throat close.
He’d adored her, too.
I didn’t want to know more. I didn’t want to see how this one ended.
But my fingers moved anyway.
Another folder.
Another Lady.
A different kind of woman this time—sharper, sleeker. The sort who wore tailored black and smoked in evening light. Her posture alone said she knew her power. She reminded me of a politician’s mistress. Smart. Dangerous. Irresistible.
This one did have videos. Dozens .
The first was them dancing. Just dancing. In a dark room, to a slow, jazzy track. She was barefoot. He was shirtless. They didn’t speak. Just moved together like they were drunk on each other.
Then another—her lying back on a rooftop, laughing as he fed her bites of something from a silver fork.
Then another?—
But I closed it before it started.
I couldn’t do it.
I was unraveling.
I sat there with my heart pounding, my fingers trembling on the trackpad. My skin felt too tight. My throat was burning. Every folder I clicked was a wound. Another piece of proof that what I thought was ours had been someone else’s first.
And maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe it wasn’t even real. But it looked like love. It felt like intimacy. It mirrored everything Ronan had done for me—every moment I thought was spontaneous or meaningful or mine.
I wasn’t his first Lady.
I was just the latest.
A line item in a long, curated archive.
I’d known that. But to actually see it?—
I squeezed my eyes shut, but the images still played behind my lids—the woman on the floor, the laughter, the blindfolds. All of it tangled together now in one sickening blur of sex and death and beauty and loss.
How many?
How many times had he done this?
How many women had fallen into that velvet-lined trap, thinking they were safe, thinking they were chosen?
How many had he walked away from?
How many hadn’t made it out ?
I wanted to shut the laptop. To throw it across the room. To scream until my voice broke.
But I couldn’t.
Not yet.
There were still more folders. Older ones. The dates stretching back over a decade now. And each one marked with the same name.
Lady.
Lady.
Lady.
I braced myself and opened another. This one was grainier, older tech.
The woman wore a red dress and heels, standing on a balcony at night.
There was something brittle about her smile, like she was trying too hard.
The clip only lasted a few seconds. Just her turning toward the camera. Saying something I couldn’t hear.
Then the screen went black.
It didn’t take much imagination to know what might’ve happened next.
Tears blurred my vision, but I didn’t wipe them away.
I let them fall.
Because this wasn’t jealousy. It wasn’t even heartbreak, not exactly. It was grief. Grief for the woman I’d let myself become—for the fantasy I’d bought into. For the part of me that still, even now, wanted to defend him.
He hadn’t lied to me.
Not really.
But he hadn’t told the truth either.
And maybe that was worse.
I was supposed to be smart. I was a journalist. A skeptic. A woman who prided herself on being able to see through bullshit, to smell a trap before it was sprung .
But I hadn’t seen this.
I’d been so desperate to feel something real, I hadn’t stopped to question what real meant to a man like Ronan.
I curled my arms around myself and rocked once—twice—like I could rock myself out of this nightmare.
What had I done?
What had I let happen?
Was this how it ended for all of them?
A flash drive. A folder. A date.
A name that wasn’t a name.
Lady.
Lady.
Lady.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there.
Eventually, the laptop screen dimmed, the videos gone dark, the silence too loud.
But the ache stayed.
Not because he’d hurt me.
But because he’d given me everything—and now I didn’t know if any of it was real.
I had to get out of this townhouse.
I needed air.
I grabbed the drive, yanked it from the laptop, and shoved it into a drawer I didn’t lock. It wasn’t about hiding it. It was about making it disappear for a little while. Just long enough for me to think clearly.
I threw on a sweatshirt, pulled my hair back, and walked.
No destination. Just movement.
Just enough to keep from falling apart.
The sky was pale blue, the air thick with the scent of brine from the harbor. The streets blurred as I passed them—brick sidewalks, old oaks, porches draped in ferns and flags. Charleston was beautiful. But it had never felt farther from safe.
When I reached the water, I stopped.
There was a bench nearby. I sat.
Let the weight of it all settle over me like fog.
I couldn’t call Mina. Not for this. I couldn’t explain it without sounding insane.
Because who the hell falls in love with a man they barely know?
Who lets herself be owned?
Who writes a letter and ends up wanting more than her own rules ever allowed?
Me.
I did.
And now I didn’t know what the hell to do with that.
The woman on the video wasn’t some stranger. She was a mirror. A warning.
And I had no idea if I was ready to face what came next.