Chapter 13
RETH
Five days. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve buried myself inside her, how many times I’ve dragged her under me, over me, against me, chasing that perfect broken sound she makes when I hit the end of her. And still—still—it’s not enough.
For the last five days, we weren’t people but rather creatures made of need, of heat, of mouths and hands and madness, trying to fuck something out of each other that neither of us would dare name.
Every orgasm is just another hit of a drug that only makes the craving worse. The second I pull out, the second her body stops clenching around me, the hunger slams back in harder, meaner, like my soul is trying to claw its way out of my skin to get back inside hers.
I lie here in the dark like a man balancing on a blade’s edge, forcing my hands to stay still while she sleeps draped across my chest. Every slow, unguarded exhale she releases is like a ghost’s fingers, stroking the fevered seams of my self-control.
Occasionally, she stirs, shrugs her knee higher, tightens her grip.
Sometimes I think if I looked down I’d see her fingers fused into my sternum.
She’s asleep, and she still holds me like she’s afraid I’ll disappear.
And that does something to my insides, lets the soft edges she's managed to expose wither because at some point… I will.
I will disappear.
That knowledge only makes me want to be inside her even more, because those are the only moments I forget that too soon I’ll have to walk out that door without knowing when I’ll ever be able to come back.
Fuck.
I tighten my arm around her, close my eyes.
But when I don’t see that front door closing with her behind it, I see my face buried between her thighs.
I see her lips part and those flushed cheeks while she comes.
It’s like two ends of scale. No matter what I do, I’m always watching the scale tip one way or the other.
But while she’s this close where I can touch her, kiss her, make love to her, I choose to focus on that rather than the weight of leaving.
My cock stirs. Goddammit. She’s exhausted, Nazareth. You’ve worn her out.
The reminder helps, barely. I focus on the sounds drifting up from the Paris street below—the distant rumble of an early delivery truck, the soft coo of pigeons, the first tentative chirps of birds greeting the dawn.
I try to count them. Try to let the city’s quiet rhythm pull me away from the heat of her body, from the way her pussy is still slick against my thigh, from the terrifying certainty that I could wake her with my mouth and she would let me.
It doesn’t work.
Fuck.
Carefully, I ease out from beneath her. She makes a small, sleepy sound of protest, reaching for me even in sleep, and it nearly breaks me. I brush my lips across her temple, whisper something soft I’m not sure she’ll remember, then slip from the bed.
I reach for my karambit taped to the underside of the nightstand, handle positioned for a lightning-fast reverse grip draw, then walk out of the bedroom, placing it on the kitchen counter.
The apartment is quiet except for the city waking outside, and I drop to the living room floor and start moving—slow at first, then harder. Sit-ups until my abs burn. Push-ups until my arms shake.
I drop into shadow work next—fists up, stance low, the way Rowan drilled into me when I was still a boy learning how to survive. Jab. Cross. Hook. Elbow. I move faster, sharper, letting the imaginary opponent take on different faces with every strike.
Sweat flies. My knuckles cut through the air with audible whooshes. I spin, throw a knee, follow with a brutal elbow that would shatter bone if anyone were actually there. The movement is clean. Lethal. Beautiful in its violence.
But no matter how hard I push—no matter how many ghosts I kill in the quiet Paris dawn—I can still feel her behind me on the bed. Still smell her on my skin. Still hear the soft, trusting sound of her breathing.
My cock is hard again. Aching.
I growl under my breath and double down, throwing combinations until my shoulders burn and my lungs scream.
She needs rest.
Be good.
Just be fucking good for her.
Sweat drips down my spine as I drop into another set of shadow work, fists cutting the air, elbows sharp, knees driving up like I’m trying to murder the quiet itself. The burn in my muscles is good. Familiar. A language my body understands better than tenderness.
Then I hear it. A soft scrape outside the apartment door. Barely there. The kind of sound most people would dismiss as the building settling or a neighbor walking past. But I’m not most people.
My body locks mid-motion. The killer in me snaps awake instantly, instincts honed by thirteen years of survival flooding every nerve. My heart rate doesn’t spike—it drops, steady and cold. I’m already moving, silent as death across the hardwood.
The karambit is exactly where I left it, and in one fluid motion it’s in my hand, the curved steel an extension of my arm. Cool. Familiar. Ready.
I cross the room like smoke, every instinct screaming. Sophia is still asleep behind me, breathing deep and trusting, completely unaware. Good. I want her unaware. I want her safe.
The door is two steps away when Ian’s low, lazy drawl filters through the wood.
“Is anyone naked in here?”
The tension bleeds out of my shoulders in a single breath, but I don’t loosen my grip on the blade. Not yet. Old habits die harder than men. I crack the door just enough to meet his smug face.
He arches a brow at the karambit still clenched in my fist. “Morning, sunshine. You planning to carve me up before coffee, or are we feeling civilized today?”
“You were one second away from holding your intestines in your arms, jackass.”
Ian makes this dramatic show of swooning.
“God, I love it when you talk dirty to me.” He strolls inside like he owns the place, carrying a paper bag that smells like fresh croissants and butter.
His gaze drifts past me to the bedroom where Sophia sleeps curled under the sheet, hair wild, one bare shoulder exposed.
He smirks. “She’s still breathing. Bold of you.”
“Shut up.” I step into the gap and pull the bedroom door closed behind me.
Ian sets the bag down and leans against the counter, arms crossed. “Have you lost weight?”
I frown.
“You look like hell. Sleep at all?”
“No.”
“Did you at least let her sleep?”
I don’t answer. The silence does it for me.
He chuckles quietly. “I’ll put some Liquid IV on the grocery list.”
I glance at the closed bedroom door, then nod toward the balcony. While I’m distracted by Ian, I might as well make sure she gets some quality rest because she’s gonna need it later.
Ian follows me out, croissant already in hand, completely unbothered by the early hour or the fact that I nearly put a karambit through his throat thirty seconds ago.
He drops into his chair. Takes a bite. Chews. Looks at Paris like it owes him something. “Talk to me about the last three months.”
I look at him.
“I've been in Paris, Reth. Completely cut off. I need to know enough to do my job.” A beat. “Give me that.”
That's the right framing, and he knows it.
Just enough. He's not asking me to unpack it.
He's asking for what he needs to protect her.
Which means I give him the operational picture and nothing else.
The personal cost of it stays where it belongs—inside the walls of whatever I've become inside Valeria's orbit.
“I haven’t been able to get Mary and Samuel.”
“In three fucking months?”
“She's been running me hard,” I say.
“How hard?”
I clench my jaw and stare at the city without seeing any of it.
“Reth?”
“Sixteen jobs in three months. No recovery time between.”
Ian stops chewing. “Jesus. She’s never run you that hard.” He sets the croissant down. Looks at me with that flat, stripped-back expression that means he's stopped performing and started calculating. “That's not operational tempo.”
“It’s punishment.” I rub my hands together, that nervous itch coming to life whenever I talk about her. “She’s punishing me.”
“For what?”
I glance inside the apartment. “For choosing Sophia over her.”
Ian is quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that means he's running it and doesn't like where it lands. “She can't touch Sophia directly.”
“No. We have an arrangement. Sophia stays untouched as long as I stay compliant.” I look at my hands.
“So she touches me instead. Volume. Exhaustion.
Making sure I'm across four continents with no time to think straight. No time to get close to Mary. No time to be anything except what she needs me to be.” I pause.
“It's elegant, in a way. The punishment and the control are the same thing.”
Ian stares at me. “That's not elegant. That's sadistic.”
“With Valeria, those are the same thing too.”
He picks the croissant back up. Doesn't eat it. Just holds it the way he holds things when he needs his hands to have something to do. “How close is she to figuring out where Sophia is?”
“Close enough that I can't stay much longer.”
“And not close enough that you didn't come.”
“No,” I say. “Not close enough for that.”
“So what? In five days you leave—”
“Two.”
Ian stills. The easy register is completely gone now. What's left is the stripped-back version—the one that doesn't perform anything. “Does she know?”
I don't answer.
He looks at me for a long moment, then through the glass doors into the apartment, toward the closed bedroom door, toward where she's sleeping. Something moves through his expression that he doesn't bother controlling.
“Two days, Reth. She's not gonna take that well.”
“That's why I'm not going to tell her.”
Ian turns back to me slowly. “Sorry?”
“You heard me.”
“I heard you say something spectacularly stupid, yes.” He sets the croissant down. “You're just going to—what? Let her wake up one morning and you’re gone?”
Something tightens across my shoulders, and I bite down on the silence.
“That's your plan?”
More silence.
“That's a terrible fucking plan.”
“It's the only one that works.” I look at him steadily. “If I tell her, she'll spend two days trying to talk me out of leaving. Or she'll spend two days grieving something that hasn't happened yet. Either way, I lose the two days. She loses the two days. And I'd rather she have them.”
Ian gets up, paces, and I recognize his movements for what they are. Anger. Then he turns to face me.
“I watched that woman check the door every morning for three months waiting for flowers that told her you were still alive.
I watched her hold herself together with both hands every single day.
And you want me to watch her wake up to you gone and tell her—what?
That you had to leave? That you'll be back?
While she's standing there with that look on her face that she gets when she's trying really hard not to fall apart?”
The silence between us is the loudest thing on the balcony.
“I can't do that to her.”
“You won't be doing it to her. I will.” I look at him. “And I need you to be there when she wakes up. That's the job, Ian. That's all I'm asking.”
He stares at me for a long moment. The muscle in his jaw works. He looks away, at the city, at the Tower in the distance, at everything except me.
“You're going to leave her a note, at least,” he says finally. Not a question. A condition. “Reth.” His voice drops. “Leave her something. Anything. Don't let the last thing she has from you be an empty pillow.”
“You think this is what I want?” I snap.
“You think I want to leave her? That it’s not gonna kill me to walk out that door as much as it’s gonna kill her to wake up with me gone?
” I stand, look him square in the eye. “If I had a choice, I would stay,” I bite out.
“I’d. Fucking. Stay. But you know as well as I do that’s not an option.
Right now, I have to put her safety above anything else.
Above what I want, what she wants. Keeping her away from Valeria is the only fucking thing that matters. ”
Ian’s green eyes are hard around the edges. He shifts like he wants to pace again, then decides against it, pulling a palm down his face as he inhales deep. “And when you go. What do I tell her?”
“That I'm coming back.”
“And are you?”
“Yes.” I hold his gaze. “That’s the only thing I’m certain about. Coming back to her.”
Ian looks at me for a long moment. Then down at the city. Then back at the apartment. The bedroom door still closed. Her still sleeping on the other side of it.
“Okay,” he says finally. “Is the plan still to get to Mary and Samuel?”
I turn and go to stand by the banister. “Yeah. I just need time. A window. As soon as I get Mary and Lucas out, we disappear. All of us. Somewhere Valeria can't reach.”
Ian is quiet for a moment. Then something shifts in his expression—the easy register dropping into something more serious. “You sure you'll be okay with that?”
I look at him. “I'll be with Sophia. Of course I will.”
“Not talking about that. I'm talking about walking away without ever getting your shot at her.” A beat. “You sure you can just—disappear? Leave her breathing?”
The question sits between us.
I've thought about killing her. More times than I can count and in more ways than most people could imagine.
I've built it out in the dark every night for years—the fantasy of the karambit finding the soft place beneath her ribs, dragging slowly through everything she keeps behind that immaculate exterior.
I've imagined splitting her open just to prove what I've always known—that there's nothing in there.
No heart. No center. Just the hollow architecture of a woman who learned to simulate humanity well enough to weaponize it.
I've wanted to watch her understand, in the last seconds of it, that the thing she turned me into was the thing that ended her. But now, it comes down to choosing between revenge and the woman I’ve fallen in love with.
“If it means Sophia is safe,” I say. “Yes.”
Ian steps up, places a hand on my shoulder, eyes locked on mine. “You’re a better man than me, then.”
He goes inside, and I stand there for a moment longer. The city below. The jasmine. Croissant crumbs.
I'm not a better man than anyone. I'm just a man who found something worth more than revenge. And for now…that has to be enough.