20. Isabelle
ISABELLE
I'm sitting on the edge of the hotel bed staring at my phone when I hear the knock.
My entire body goes rigid. No one should be knocking on my door at this hour unless something is very, very wrong. In fact, no one should be knocking on my door at all. No one knows I'm here.
I haven't slept. How could I? Every time I close my eyes, I see Julian's face when the photo fell out of his wallet that proved he was hired to kill me.
The knock comes again, louder this time. More insistent. I stand slowly, my heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat. I move toward the door, my bare feet silent on the carpet. "Who is it?" My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
No answer. Just another knock. My hand trembles, and I take another step, unsure if I should open the door or not. I shouldn't. But whoever is on the outside…
Before I can decide what to do, the door explodes inward.
Julian bursts through, his eyes wild and his entire body coiled like a weapon ready to strike. "We need to go. Right now."
The sight of him snaps the last fraying thread of my emotions, and I explode just like that fucking door.
"Get out! Get the fuck out of my room!"
"Isabelle, listen to me—"
"No!" I'm shaking with rage, with the sheer audacity of him showing up here after everything. "You followed me! I told you to leave me alone, and you followed me!"
"Someone is coming," he says, his voice urgent. "We don't have time for this."
"I don't believe you," I hiss venomously. "You're a liar. You've been lying to me since the moment we met. Why the hell would I believe anything you say now?"
His jaw tightens. "Because I'm trying to keep you alive."
"You were hired to kill me! You were supposed to murder me, and instead you—"
"I refused the contract," he says, desperation and irritation warring together in his voice. "I told you that. I'm not going to kill you. Isabelle, we don't fucking have time for this—"
"Why won't you just leave me alone?"
"Because there are other assassins hunting you," he says through gritted teeth. "And one of them is in this hotel right now."
"Bullshit." But even as I say it, I hear heavy footsteps in the hall, moving toward my door. Julian hears it too. His entire body shifts, his hand moving to the gun at his waist.
"Get behind me," he says quietly.
"No." I'm still furious. "I'm not—"
A man fills the half-open doorway. He's massive, broad-shouldered, his face cold and expressionless.
He has a gun in his hand, and it's pointed directly at me.
Ice-cold fear, like nothing I've ever felt before in my life, floods me. I throw myself sideways as the gun goes off, the sound deafening in the small space. The bullet hits the wall behind where I was standing, plaster exploding in a cloud of white dust.
As I lay there, partially stunned, Julian crosses the room in three strides and slams into the man with brutal force, driving him back against the wall.
The gun goes flying, skittering across the floor.
I scramble for it, my hands shaking, my heart pounding so hard I think it might burst. I hear Julian snarl something at him, calling him Dmitri, and I vaguely realize that must be the man's name.
Dmitri recovers fast. He drives his elbow into Julian's ribs, and Julian grunts, his grip loosening for just a second. The man shoves him back and lunges for me.
I have the gun in my hands, but I don't know how to use it. I don't know if the safety is on or off. I have no idea if I can actually pull the trigger. Julian showed me how to fight back if someone grabs me, but we didn't have time for target practice. I've never held a gun before in my life.
Dmitri's hand closes around my wrist, and he twists, hard.
Pain explodes up my arm, and I cry out, the gun falling from my grip.
Then Julian is there again, grabbing Dmitri from behind and slamming him face-first into the wall.
There's a sickening crunch of bone meeting plaster, and blood streams from Dmitri's nose.
But he doesn't go down. He spins, his fist connecting with Julian's jaw. Julian staggers back, blood on his lip, and Dmitri advances. I see the knife in his hand before Julian does.
"Julian!" I scream.
He moves just in time, the blade slicing through the air where his throat was a second before. It catches his arm instead, opening a gash that immediately starts bleeding.
Julian doesn't even flinch. He grabs Dmitri's wrist and twists, forcing the knife away, and drives his knee into the man's stomach. Once, twice, three times. Dmitri doubles over, gasping, and Julian brings his elbow down on the back of his neck.
The man crumples.
For a moment, neither of us moves. We're both breathing hard, both staring at the unconscious assassin on the floor. And then Julian kneels down, grabbing the man's head in the crook of his arm, and he twists.
I nearly vomit at the sound of the crack as the neck breaks.
My stomach roils and heaves, but Julian is already on his feet, his hand around my wrist as he pulls me out of the room and toward the stairs.
We go down a flight wordlessly, and he knocks on three doors, continuing on when the inhabitant yells something back, before there's no answer and he kicks the door in, slamming it behind us as we step into an empty room on a different floor.
Then Julian looks at me. "Are you hurt?"
I open my mouth to say no, but that's when I feel the sharp, burning pain in my side. I look down and see blood seeping through my shirt.
"Fuck." Julian reaches for the hem of my shirt. "Let me see."
"Don't touch me." But my voice is weak now, the adrenaline fading and the pain rushing in to take its place.
"Isabelle." His voice is gentle. "Let me see."
I don't have the strength to fight him. I lift my shirt with shaking hands, and we both see the gash along my ribs. It's not deep—Dmitri must not have had good aim when he grabbed my arm—but it's bleeding steadily.
"Sit down," Julian says, guiding me toward the bed.
I sit because my legs won't hold me anymore. My entire body is shaking, the reality of what just happened crashing over me in waves. I almost died. Again.
Julian disappears into the bathroom and returns with a towel and the first aid kit from under the sink. He kneels in front of me. "This is going to hurt," he warns. Then he presses the towel against my wound, and I gasp, my hands flying to his shoulders.
"I know," he murmurs. "I know. Just breathe."
I try. I focus on breathing while he cleans the wound and applies pressure. His arm is still bleeding. The gash from Dmitri's knife is deep and angry-looking. "You're hurt too," I say quietly.
"I'm fine."
"You're bleeding."
"I've had worse." He doesn't look up from my wound. "This needs stitches, but I can butterfly it for now. We need to move soon."
"Why did you follow me?" The question comes out before I can stop it. "I told you to leave me alone."
His hands go still on my skin. For a long moment, he doesn't answer. "Because I couldn't let you die."
"You were hired to kill me."
"I refused the contract." His voice is rough. "I told you that."
"But you took it in the first place." My eyes burn. "You accepted money to murder me."
"I know." He finally looks up at me, and the pain in his eyes is so raw it takes my breath away. "I know. And I will never forgive myself for that."
I stare at him, my heart pounding.
"You fought well," he says quietly. "Back there. You didn't freeze."
"Don't." I try to pull away, but his hand stays on my hip, holding me in place to work on the wound. "Don't try to distract me with compliments."
"It's not a distraction. It's the truth." His eyes search mine. "You're stronger than you know, Isabelle. Braver than you give yourself credit for."
"Fuck off." But there's less bite to it now.
He almost smiles. Then his expression turns serious again.
"I regretted taking the contract," he says quietly.
"From the moment I knew who you were, I regretted it.
I didn't want to finish it. But there was no out, Isabelle.
Not without accepting that it meant my death.
I've lived my whole adult life grappling with my own mortality, and I thought I had come to terms with it a long time ago.
But I guess facing it isn't as easy as I thought. "
I don't know what to say to that. His hands move over my side, closing the wound with butterfly bandages, and I feel my skin shiver under his touch. My back arches, ever so slightly, as his fingers tighten on my hip again, and I feel my breath catch.
I don't want to want him. I want all these feelings to go away. But looking at him on his knees next to me, his hair messy and his arm soaked in blood, stubble on his jaw, and his expression wrecked and his face still so fucking beautiful, I can't help it.
He's sin and danger and death, and I want him more than I want to breathe.
He looks up, and his gaze catches mine. I see his jaw tense, his chest heave as he breathes in sharply.
"You still want me, don't you?" he murmurs. "Even knowing what I am. Knowing I'm a murderer who was hired to kill you. You still fucking want me, pretty girl."
I can't speak. His hand drops from where he applied the last butterfly bandage, down to my inner thigh. I tense under his touch, my lips parting, and I see his eyes go dark.
"Dirty girl," he murmurs. "Dangerous, dirty, filthy girl." He rises up, his throat moving, and his hand captures my jaw. "I thought you'd never touch me again, once you knew. That you'd be disgusted by me."
"I am," I whisper, and his jaw clenches again.
"Are you? I think if I slid my hand between your thighs right now, you'd be wet."
My breath catches. "That doesn't mean I don't hate you."
"But I don't disgust you. Even if you want me to." His arm slides around my back, lifting me up and setting me further back on the bed. I fall back onto the mattress, gasping at the pull in my side, but when he leans over me, all I can think about is being consumed by him.