Chapter Twenty-Four
Kayne stood in the kitchen long after everyone else had scattered to quieter corners, the house settling into a tense, watchful hush. He stared at the security monitors without really seeing them. One question wouldn’t leave him alone.
What if it was Danica?
He didn’t like how quickly his brain accepted the possibility. Didn’t appreciate how little resistance it offered. He didn’t enjoy thinking it, or how easily the pieces began to line up once he allowed the thought to exist.
Danica Giordano had access.
That was the part that wouldn’t stop grinding at him.
She’d been in the club more than enough times and had wandered freely. She’d laughed with the construction crew, flirted, lingered. Cameras could’ve been placed slowly and carefully over time with no suspicion. She knew where Chloe wouldn’t look and which rooms felt safe enough to ignore.
She could’ve copied Leo’s key fob. It was easy enough if you knew what you were doing, or paid someone who did. Leo was careful, but that didn’t mean he was invulnerable. Not when family was involved and trust did half the work for you.
But the shooting, that was the sticking point.
Danica didn’t feel like someone who knew her way around firearms, but Kayne had seen civilians learn to shoot frighteningly fast when anger, desperation, or obsession fueled the effort.
All it would take was a few hours at a range, a couple of YouTube videos, and someone willing to teach her for money, or for attention.
Motivation was the real accelerant. Jealousy could be sharp. But desperation? That made people inventive.
Kayne scrubbed a hand over his face. Chloe was upstairs, trying to sleep and failing. He could feel it in the house, the way her anxiety hummed through the walls like static. It ravaged him that the threat might be coming from someone she’d tried to protect.
A soft footstep sounded behind him.
“Kayne.”
Anja’s voice was low and controlled. That meant it was not good news.
Kayne turned. “You found something?”
“Yeah,” Anja said, expression grim. “From Tyler. Financials on Danica Giordano.”
“I ran a background check. I know she has massive credit card debt.”
“Tyler dug deeper. She owes money to a private lender, the kind that doesn’t send friendly reminders. She took out the loan in her mother’s name.”
Kayne closed his eyes briefly. That’s why he didn’t find it on the initial check.
Jealousy, debt, access, and a sister whose success was everywhere from billboards to television screens to magazine covers, while Danica drowned quietly beside it. Close enough to touch, too far to reach.
Anya watched him carefully. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I’m thinking I don’t want it to be her,” Kayne said flatly. “And that makes it dangerous.”
Because if it was Danica, then this wasn’t a stranger stalking from the shadows. It was someone Chloe loved. Someone she would never see coming.
Kayne looked toward the staircase again, toward the woman who’d trusted him with her body and her life. And now, unknowingly, with the possibility that her own sister might be actively trying to destroy it.
His diaphragm knotted.
This wasn’t about eliminating a threat anymore and stopping a shooter. If Danica Giordano was the villain, then this case was about saving Chloe from betrayal that could break her in ways bullets never could.
Kayne would burn the world down before he let that happen, even if the fire had to start inside the family.
#
Chloe knew Kayne was watching her the way he did when he’d already made up his mind and was just waiting for her to catch up.
She was growing to detest that look.
“It can’t be her,” she said quietly, arms folded tight across her midsection, physically attempting to hold the thought in place. “Kayne, it just doesn’t fit.”
He leaned against the counter, broad shoulders rigid, jaw set. He didn’t interrupt her. That restraint felt deliberate. He was giving her room to arrive at the truth on her own.
“Yes, she’s dramatic. Totally impulsive. She gets jealous, sure,” Chloe continued, words rushing now, stacking up to barricade the truth. “But she’s not this. Danica doesn’t plan. She doesn’t wait. She reacts.”
Kayne’s eyes softened, and that nearly broke her.
“People change when they’re cornered,” he said gently. “Debt does that. Fear does that.”
“She wouldn’t shoot someone.” Chloe shook her head hard. “Danica wouldn’t hurt Leo. She wouldn’t hurt me.”
She loves me, she almost said. The words hovered, fragile and already cracking under their own weight. Then she remembered the defaced photos, the violence and malice in the ink, and wondered when love had morphed into something pointed enough to draw blood.
Kayne pushed off the counter and crossed the room in two strides. He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could feel the heat of him, the steady gravity that had been keeping her upright since the day he’d walked into her life.
“I don’t want it to be her either,” he said softly. “But wanting doesn’t change the math.”
Tears burned, sudden and furious. “I can’t lose her,” Chloe whispered. “I’ve already lost so much.”
Kayne didn’t argue. He cupped her face instead, hands warm and sure, thumbs brushing beneath her eyes. His forehead rested against hers, his breath steady.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “No matter who this turns out to be.”
Her heart cracked open.
She surged forward before she could overthink it, pressing her mouth to his. The kiss wasn’t desperate. It was hungry in a quiet, aching way. It was relief. It was choosing each other in the middle of chaos.
Kayne made a low sound in his throat and kissed her back, slow and deep. His hands slid to her waist and anchored her to the present, to the certainty of him. His kiss reassured her that he wasn’t going anywhere. That she wasn’t facing this alone.
Later, as they were tangled together beneath soft sheets, the world narrowed to skin, breath, and the way his arms securely wrapped around her. He didn’t rush her or push. He stayed with her, steady and solid, until the tension finally loosened its grip and exhaustion claimed them both.
Chloe slept pressed against him, his heartbeat a metronome against her ear.
And then she dreamed.
Danica stood at the end of a dark hallway, her face half in shadow, eyes bright with something twisted and unfamiliar. She smiled as Chloe tried to move and couldn’t, tried to speak and failed.
“You took everything,” Danica said, voice echoing wrong.
That’s when Chloe saw the gun.
“You might have loved him, but he’s mine now.”
The words landed heavier than the weapon.
Danica lunged, the sound of a gun firing shattering Chloe’s eardrums. Had she been hit? Was she dying?
Chloe woke with a gasp, heart hammering, sweat slick against her skin.
Kayne’s arms tightened around her. “Hey. Cher. You’re safe.”
She clutched his biceps, breath shuddering. “It was her,” she whispered, even as denial still fought to survive in daylight. “In my dream. She was trying to hurt me.”
Kayne didn’t say I know. He didn’t say dreams don’t mean anything either.
He just held her, stronger, closer, as if he could keep the nightmare from ever finding her again.
But long after her breathing evened out, Chloe stared into the dark, haunted by the terrible possibility that her mind might be seeing what her heart still refused to accept.
#
Leo De Luca lay awake on the narrow bed in the safe house guest room, staring at the ceiling as if it might eventually offer answers.
It didn’t.
The place was quiet in that artificial, too-controlled way.
Every sound felt amplified. The hum of the security system.
Soft thudding footsteps somewhere upstairs.
The distant clink of a door closing. Kayne moving through the house like a sentry who didn’t sleep so much as merely pause because rest was a luxury the situation no longer allowed.
Leo exhaled heavily.
Danica.
He hated that the thought even existed, and once it had, it refused to leave.
Chloe’s half-sister was spoiled, sharp-tongued, and needy in a way Chloe never had the luxury to be. Danica had always wanted more. More attention, more validation, more money, more everything, and Chloe had always given without asking for anything back.
The photos in the closet replayed in his mind uninvited. They were carefully hidden, not displayed or theatrical. They were private and personal, obsessive and twisted.
That was what scared him most.
If it was Danica, this wasn’t an impulse, it was rot that didn’t announce itself until it was too deep to ignore. It had set in quietly and patiently.
Leo rolled onto his side, staring at the closed door. Down the hall, two turns past the bathroom, was Anja’s room. He told himself not to think about that.
He told himself a lot of things lately.
Don’t think about the way she’d tackled him without hesitation, or how her arm had locked across his torso like instinct incarnate. Don’t think about the look on her face afterward. Controlled, yes, but threaded with something open she clearly hadn’t intended to reveal to him.
Don’t think about how safe he’d felt in that split second before the world exploded.
And definitely don’t think about how badly he wanted to knock on her door right now just to hear her voice say his name.
He groaned softly and shoved a pillow over his face.
This was not the time.
Chloe needed him steady and present. Rational.
She was barely holding her denial together with sheer willpower, and if Danica was the villain, the fallout would be nuclear.
Leo had spent his life protecting Chloe from disappointment and betrayal.
The idea that the worst of it might come from inside her own family made his heart ache.
Anja was a dangerous complication he hadn’t planned for. Didn’t necessarily want. Definitely didn’t need.
But want didn’t care about timing or reason.
He dropped the pillow and stared at the ceiling again, pulse slowing only slightly.
Anja was strong, capable, and terrifyingly brave. She’d seen him at his worst when he was shaken, vulnerable, and nearly killed, and yet, she hadn’t flinched. Hadn’t made a joke or tried to soften it. She’d simply acted.
That kind of woman didn’t come along often.
And wanting her, really wanting her, meant risking something else being taken away.
Leo closed his eyes. Family first, he reminded himself. Always. He would deal with Danica, and he would protect Chloe. He would keep his head on straight.
And Anja?
That was a problem for another day.
Unfortunately, as sleep finally crept in, his last thought wasn’t of danger or betrayal, but of the blonde woman down the hall who had already proven she was willing to put her body between him and a bullet.
And how terrifyingly hard it was not to want more than that, not just from her, but from the life that came with her.