Archie
The water ran cold long before I turned the tap off.
I stayed standing there anyway, hands braced against the sink, head dipped, watching thin ribbons of diluted red spiral down the drain.
Blood clung stubbornly to my skin—caught beneath my nails, dried into the lines of my knuckles, smeared along my forearms where I hadn’t scrubbed hard enough the first time.
I scrubbed again. This time harder.
The soap burned where the skin had split across my knuckles. It was a good feeling, because it reminded me that I was still here. Still standing. Still breathing.
Behind me, the safehouse sat shrouded in a heavy kind of silence. It wasn’t peaceful or calm. Just… still, holding its breath in anticipation of what else we’d bring into it.
We’d arrived ten minutes ago.
I’d locked the doors and checked the windows out of habit, even knowing that we hadn’t be followed here. I walked the perimeter twice, just to be sure. Because this was no longer about my safety alone, but also Tone Cavalho’s.
She hadn’t said much on the drive. She’d just sat there, still wearing those ridiculous heels she insisted on, legs crossed like she hadn’t just watched me burn two bodies out in the middle of nowhere.
Tone didn’t shake or cry. She didn’t ask questions she wasn’t ready to hear the answers to. She was used to this life… she was born in to chaos and crazy. That should’ve made things easier, but somehow it didn’t.
I dragged my hands under the stream again, watching the last of the pink fade to nothing.
I would never admit it out loud—not to anyone—but I couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Not after. Not when it cooled and clung and congealed, reminding me too much of its purpose.
During? It was clean. Controlled. Necessary.
After? It was just… messy.
I rinsed my arms one last time until there was nothing left but clean skin and that dull sting of over-scrubbed flesh. Then I reached for the towel, drying off slowly, methodically.
The place Raze had sent me to was exactly what it needed to be.
Forgettable.
There was one bedroom and a small living space. The kitchen was barely big enough for one person to turn around in without hitting something. It was definitely unmemorable, the kind of place that no one looked twice at, and definitely not the lifestyle that Tone was accustomed to.
A safehouse that was temporary and disposable. Just like every other place I’d been living out of for the past month.
I reached for the hem of my shirt, peeling it off slowly. The fabric had stiffened where blood had dried into it, clinging in places before it finally gave. I tossed it aside without looking at it again.
There was no point dwelling on the past, no matter how near it felt.
The two men from tonight—my jaw tightened slightly when I thought about them—they’d been easy to manage. Too easy. And I didn’t like that. Because easy didn’t necessarily mean the end.
I straightened, grabbing a clean shirt from the back of a chair and dragging it over my head.
The sound of water running down the hallway told me Tone had found the shower.
I stepped out into the main room, grabbing the bottle from the table and pouring a glass without thinking. Vodka. Because some things didn’t change, no matter how far you ran.
I took a slow drink, letting the burn settle low in my chest as I leaned back against the edge of the counter.
Then I reached for my phone. Two faces stared back at me from the screen. The men from tonight.
I’d taken the photos before I torched them. The images were already moving through channels that ran quicker than law enforcement ever could.
If they existed, I’d find them.
My fingers tightened slightly around the glass.
They’d followed her from the villa. Through the city. Out to the industrial estate. Patient. Focused. Unwavering. The question was—why?
I pushed off the counter, moving to the couch and dropped into it, elbows braced on my knees as I stared at the floor.
Was it Tone they were after? Or was it the name attached to her? Because those were two very different problems. And I didn’t like either of them.
She was taking her damn time in the shower. Too much time.
The water had been running long enough to turn from background noise into something that grated—steady, relentless, impossible to ignore. I checked the clock without meaning to, then again a minute later.
It was annoying that it felt like I was waiting. My jaw tightened as the realization hit and I dragged my gaze away from the bathroom door.
She got under my skin too easily.
Without effort. Without asking for permission. She just sat there idly, like she’d always had a place in my head and I’d been the last one to notice.
That was a problem. A serious one.
I pushed out a slow breath and ran a hand down my face, pressing my palm hard against my mouth like I could physically force the thought of her out.
It didn’t work. If anything, it made it worse.
Because now all I could hear was the water. All I could picture was her on the other side of that door. And I didn’t like how quickly my mind filled in the details.
She was fire. That was the only way to describe her. The kind that burned through everything it touched.
She didn’t walk into a room—she altered it. Shifted it. Made people react without even trying. There was something reckless in her. Something sharp and defiant that didn’t bend or soften.
And the way she looked at people—like she saw exactly what they were. And didn’t care.
My grip tightened around the glass.
She brought something out in me. Something I didn’t trust.
The thoughts I had about her weren’t clean or controlled. And that made her dangerous. Made me worse.
I took another slow drink. Grounded myself. Because I knew how this went.
I knew what happened when my mind locked onto something—someone.
Obsession wasn’t new to me. It was something I managed. Contained. Because the last thing I needed was to turn her into something she didn’t ask to be. A fixation. A weakness. A target.
I leaned back into the couch, staring up at the ceiling.
The water shut off down the hall. Silence followed. Then the soft sound of movement.
Fabric.
A door opening.
I took another sip of my drink, letting the moment stretch.
“You’ve got terrible taste in safehouses, Popovich.”
Her voice was dry, unaffected. It seemed like she had recovered remarkably after witnessing a double homicide.
I glanced up. She was standing at the edge of the hallway, hair damp, skin still flushed from the heat of the shower. Wearing one of the shirts from my go kit, because I was nothing if not always sufficiently prepared. It was too big, swallowing her frame, the hem brushing high against her thighs.
Her legs were bare, long. Smooth in a way that made my grip tighten around the glass in my hand. And those damn heels—back on like she hadn’t just stepped out of a shower, and she needed the extra height, the extra edge.
She didn’t. She had enough of both already.
My jaw locked as my gaze dragged up her legs, slow, deliberate, before I forced it higher.
She caught me looking.
Her eyes dipped to her feet, then lifted back to me, one brow arched like she knew exactly what she was doing—and didn’t care.
“There isn’t a reason on earth,” she said, voice dry, “that would have me walking barefoot in this place.”
Her nose scrunched slightly as she glanced around, taking in the room like it offended her.
“You look ridiculous,” I said evenly.
Her lips curved into something resembling a small smile.
“Didn’t realize disposing of bodies was on the schedule tonight.”
I held her gaze for a second longer than necessary.
Then looked away first.
“Sit,” I said, nodding toward the couch.
She did, without hesitation.
I poured another glass without asking and slid it across the table toward her.
She looked at it. Then at me. Then picked it up.
We didn’t fill the space with noise just to make it easier.
Instead, we sat there in the quiet. And somewhere between the silence and the slow burn of alcohol, the night stretched out in front of us—long, uncertain, and edged with something neither of us named.
But both of us felt.