Chapter 22 Life Goes On
LIFE GOES ON
LUCIAN
For three months, I keep my promise to her. Then I break it as I always knew I would.
I don’t even hesitate when the envelope comes, because the truth is, I can’t help it. I am who I am.
A man made for shadows. A man who kills not for money, not for duty, but for the silence it gives him inside.
What will happen if she finds out?
I don’t know. I don’t think about it. Don’t dare.
I’m selfish enough to hold onto her anyway.
She’s with me now. We live together. She moved into my world with nothing but a battered suitcase and her stubborn heart, and somehow, the cold, sterile apartment I used to call home transformed around her.
The first things to change were small. A pair of her boots by the door—muddy, worn, carelessly kicked off after a long day at the shelter. She doesn’t tuck them neatly out of sight as I would.
She lives here, and she leaves her mark as she has every right to.
Plants started appearing next—small, stubborn things in cracked ceramic pots she found at some street market downtown. The plants aren’t delicate or ornamental, they’re hardy, scrappy, fighting for sunlight the way she fought for a life outside the world she was born into.
There’s a knitted throw draped over the back of the leather couch—old, fraying slightly at the edges, defiantly imperfect. She refuses to swap it out for a newer, better one.
“This one’s lived,” she says with a grin, tugging it over her lap.
The kitchen smells different now, too—not sterile like before, but warm, lived-in. A battered ceramic jar stuffed with wooden spoons sits by the stove, and the scent of herbs, lavender, and slow-cooked meals clings to the air like a second skin.
She cooks. I eat. I love her cooking. I love her.
She doesn’t try to fix me. Change me.
She just breathes here. Leaves pieces of herself behind like breadcrumbs, leading me back to something I didn’t even realize I was starving for.
Home.
I can’t lose it.
I’m obsessed with my woman, my brothers say. They’re not judging. They’re happy for me. Logan is worried.
“Is it worth the risk?” Logan muses aloud.
We meet for a drink after work at Envy, a bar hidden inside Maddox Tower. Quiet deals get made in the dark here. It’s built for men like us.
We sat at the bar. The bartender sets down our drinks. He knows what we order. We own the building. We’re regulars.
I pick up the glass but don’t drink right away. Just stare out at the city below—still pulsing. Still restless. A living, breathing animal.
I don’t answer him because he knows what’s crawling inside of me.
No, it’s not worth the risk.
No, I can’t stop.
After a beat, Logan shrugs and slides me a black envelope. “It’s tied to the Remo fallout,” he says. “Some cleanup left. Loose ends.”
I down the drink in one shot. My throat burns. There is no absolution for me.
“I told her I quit,” I confess.
“I know.” There’s no judgment in his voice.
“I can’t.”
He just nods. He understands. My brothers are the only ones who can. We are who we are. We can’t unmake ourselves into something cleaner. Something better.
“You gonna tell her?”
“No.”
But the truth sticks to my ribs like splinters.
She’ll know anyway. She always knows.
She sees my soul. I see hers.
“You’ll be careful?” Logan asks—not a command this time, but a question, like he knows how much I’ve changed.
I nod once, still staring at the skyline.
I have changed. Maybe not enough. But enough to want to be the man she deserves, even if I’ll never fully be him.
When I get back to the apartment late, she’s sleeping. Curled up in the middle of the bed, wrapped in a down comforter, her face peaceful in a way I don’t think I’ll ever be.
I strip down, get ready for bed, and slide in beside her like I deserve to rest next to an angel like her.
I’m careful. I don’t want to wake her. I don’t want to break the spell we’ve built around ourselves.
She shifts in her sleep, instinctively finding me, resting her head on my shoulder, her hand on my chest, right over the heart she doesn’t know is still split in two.
I press a kiss to her hair. Soft. Reverent.
“I love you,” she mumbles, her voice thick with sleep.
I close my eyes, the ache in my chest almost unbearable. “I love you, too, baby,” I whisper against her skin.
I hold her tighter. I won’t let her go, I vow silently.
Because what I feel for her is the only thing that’s ever felt real in a life made of shadows.
Some vows are meant to be kept. Others…are made for silence.