14. Killian
KILLIAN
"Apply pressure here," Kai guides Ellie's fingers to a point on the medical dummy's thigh. "Three inches above the wound. That's where the artery runs."
I lean against the doorframe and watch them.
Kai’s hands are flat against the dummy, his fingers digging into the foam with a blunt, rhythmic weight that leaves deep, white divots in the artificial skin.
The Southern lilt is all but gone. He doesn’t say anything else, just watches her fingers as they sink into the dummy’s thigh, his weight shifted forward as he waits for her to find the pressure point.
She’s learning how to hold a life together with her bare hands.
But me? I just watch, thinking about how many times I’ve done the opposite.
The thing about medical dummies is they don’t fight back.
They don't scream. They don't thrash. They don't make that gargling sound in the back of the throat that you hear in your sleep.
"Pack it tight," Kai tells her, handing her haemostat gauze. "Don’t be gentle, Ellie. This isn't surgery. It's survival."
She plunges her fingers straight into the mannequin. Her jaw sets in a hard line as she digs for the artificial artery. I’ve seen that same ruthless focus on a hundred Order recruits, but seeing it on her makes the muscles in my back go rigid.
God, she's fucking amazing.
“Triage is the only rule that matters,” Kai says, stepping back to let her work. “Decide who needs help now, who can wait, and who is already past it. You save the ones you can."
“How do you make the call?” Ellie asks, her fingers still buried in the dummy’s thigh. “How do you decide who lives?”
Kai glances at me.
“Damage versus the time and resources you have available." He hands her a CAT tourniquet. “Make the choice and don't look back."
“Every choice is a death sentence for someone else," she says, twisting the rod on the tourniquet.
I watch her, and for a second, I’m back in that cell, reading the reports from her six months in the county ER.
I followed every clock-in and every trauma case, and I’ve always wondered if the informant I sent to her after we finished with him was the one she’d spent all night trying to save.
She doesn't know our paths crossed long before I walked into her home.
"You've dealt with this before," Kai says, acknowledging the steel in her voice.
She nods slowly. "Different stakes. Same principle."
I see respect flicker in Kai's eyes as he steps back. "You'll do fine. If shit goes sideways, remember the basics. Pressure, packaging, transfer. Keep them alive until we can get them somewhere safer."
"Speaking of safe," Jackson interrupts, leaning against the doorframe next to me with a tablet in hand. "We need to discuss the financials."
I nod. This conversation is necessary. That doesn’t mean I’m not dreading it.
"I need to go over some things with you, Ellie. In your office. It's important."
She follows me into the office, the smell of her jasmine perfume filling the small space. I tap the screen of Jackson's tablet and hand it to her.
“What is this?” she asks, her eyes scanning the rows of shifting digits.
“Offshore accounts, property deeds, investment portfolios,” I watch her eyes scan the screen. “And a list of aliases Jackson’s been managing since I was inside. Everything they’ve ever paid me is in those folders.”
“Thirty-seven million dollars.” She looks up at me, the words barely making it out. “All from the Order?”
I watch the color drain from her face. Her golden eyes scan the numbers, account after account, alias after alias.
Each line item is a corpse. Someone’s father.
Someone’s daughter. Someone’s husband who kissed his wife goodbye that morning and never came home.
Someone who breathed and laughed and existed until I pulled the trigger.
Or slipped poison into their drink. Or made their death look like an accident because that’s what I’m good at.
“It's blood money,” I say, and for a second, I wish I could take it all back.
“I never used it for anything but a few houses and the means to disappear. It was my insurance policy for the day I decided I was through with them, waiting for the day I had to buy my way out of that life. This is that day, Ellie.”
She stares at the screen, seeing a hundred lives traded for digits in an offshore account.
"For what?"
"For this," I gesture around us. "For when I needed to disappear, to start over. Or to fight back."
She scrolls through the records with an unreadable expression, and I can't tell if she's revolted by the source of the wealth or simply numb to the scale of it.
"Thirty-seven million dollars," she repeats, looking slightly paler. "For killing people?"
“Yes. It was the price of my own freedom. If I didn’t have those accounts, I’d still be in that cell, or in the ground. They don’t let you walk away, Ellie.”
"And now?"
"Now it's yours too. All of it. It's to fund our protection, to rebuild your life after this is over, and to do whatever you need to feel safe."
She stares at me, her head tilting in that way she does when she’s analyzing a patient.
“What do you mean, it’s mine?” The tablet slips from her hands, landing on the desk with a heavy thud. “You said my life, Killian. Not ours. Why are you talking like you’re not going to be here?”
“Because there’s no version of this where they stop coming,” I step closer until I can feel the heat of her panic. “They won’t get to you without going through me, Ellie. And they don't leave people alive who stand in their way.”
“Don’t you dare do this to me. Don’t you dare tell me you’ve already given up.” Her eyes well with tears.
I watch the moment her composure cracks, the exact second it goes from controlled to breaking, and I step into her space, my hand on her shoulder, squeezing until she’s forced to meet my eyes. I’m handing her an inheritance, and she doesn’t even know it.
“I just need you to be safe, Ellie. That’s the only part of this that matters.
” My fingers reach out and tuck her hair behind her ear.
Her watery eyes scan mine. “I’ve been preparing for an exit for seven years.
I thought I was just building a way to walk away from everything I’ve ever done.
I didn’t know I was building a future for the only person I’ve ever wanted to protect.
It’s not a plan for a life, Ellie. It’s a plan for your survival.
Whether I’m standing here to see the end of it or not. ”
“Then don’t just give me the future, Killian,” she whispers, her hand coming up to cover mine where it still rests on her face, and her tears finally spill over. “Give me the man who built it. I don’t want your money or your survival plan. I want you. Don’t you dare leave me in that future alone.”
I want to tell her. I want to watch the hope in her eyes turn into the same horror I felt the night I killed her father, just so I can finally be done with the lies. But I need her to survive the next twenty-four hours, and a woman who knows the truth won’t fight for her life next to mine.
She stands facing me in the quiet of her office. “Out of all the psychologists, how did I end up with you?”
She’s so close to the truth she could reach out and touch it.
She doesn't know about the strings I pulled, the officials I bent, or the judge I bought.
She doesn't know that getting assigned to her wasn't luck.
It was seven years of waiting for an opening.
I've been obsessed with her since the first night I saw her.
Every strategy I've built since that night has had her name at the centre of it. She just doesn't know it yet.
“Because you see something better in me,” I say, refusing to look away from the trust in her eyes. “And I want to be that man for you. If it’s not too late.”
I lean into her palm, closing my eyes for a second just to feel the heat of a woman who doesn’t know she’s touching her own ruin. I just look at her and wonder if there’s a version of this where she doesn't eventually learn to hate me.
“I believe you can be. But I need to know there are no more secrets. Is there anything else?”
Choose the lie? What option do I have when the alternative is watching her walk away? I've spent seven years engineering this moment. I’m not letting it end in her office.
“No,” Yes. So much, but telling you means losing you. “Nothing that matters now.”
She needs to trust me for the next twenty-four hours to survive. After that, I’ll give her the truth and let her destroy me for it.
Her mouth is on mine before I can even pull a breath.
She’s hungry, her teeth catching my lower lip as she tries to find something solid to hold on to in the middle of her own panic.
I can feel the frantic, heavy thud of her heart against my chest through the fabric of her hoodie, as if it’s trying to punch through her ribs.
I know I’m going to hell for letting her kiss me like this. I don’t care. If the truth is the thing that kills her, then I’ll bury it under as many lies as it takes to keep her safe.
I fist my hand in her hair and yank her head back until her throat is exposed.
I walk her backward, my boots scuffing the floor until the edge of her desk hits her spine with a muffled thud.
The wood creaks under the sudden weight, a low groan in the silent room.
I box her in, my weight pinning her to the edge of the mahogany until she’s forced to lean back, looking up at me with her hazel doe eyes.
She grabs my hoodie and pulls me down, her mouth hard against mine.
She kisses me slowly, her tongue tracing my lower lip before pushing inside.
My hands find her waist, my thumbs hooking into the waistband of her pants as I pull her into me.
I can feel the heat of her mouth and the way her breath hitches as I grind my weight into her.
Her tongue is hot and wet, moving against mine.
I can feel every small sound she makes in her throat and the way she’s already softening against me as my hands slide under the fabric of her hoodie to find bare skin.
I snake one hand around the back of her neck, my palm hot and flat against her skin.
The sounds she makes into my mouth shut the rest of it out.
I don't want to be anywhere else. Just here, with her, until the world outside the door finally finds us. I’ve spent years stealing pieces of her life, and only now do I realize how much I have to lose.
"Look at me."
She finds my eyes, and for a second, the house is silent. There are no weapons. There’s no secret society trying to kill us. I cup her face in my hands as she gets her breath, the three words I’ve never said to anyone pressing against the tip of my tongue.
“Heads up, Killian,” Jackson’s voice suddenly bursts through my earpiece. “Drones are down. Thermal shows eight signatures moving into position on the north perimeter. You’ve got thirty seconds to get out here.”
The three words go back where they came from as Jackson’s voice cuts through the room. My hands fall from her face, and the heat between us vanishes before I even pull away.
“Not now.” I don’t look back as I head for the door. “They’re here.”
Night falls over the house, all lights extinguished, windows covered, electronic signatures masked by Jackson's countermeasures.
Ellie and I lie in her bed fully clothed, her in leggings and a hoodie, and me in tactical combats.
Weapons are within reach. The darkness is absolute, but I can feel the warmth of her body beside mine and hear the steady rhythm of her breathing.
"I can't sleep," she whispers.
"You should try," I say. "You'll need your strength tomorrow."
"Tell me something," she says, shifting closer until her head rests on my shoulder. "Something true. Something you've never told anyone."
I consider what I can safely reveal, looking for a truth that costs nothing I can't afford right now.
"When I was twelve," I begin quietly, "I put two kids in the hospital.
They were bullying a younger foster brother.
Michael. They were pinning him down, cutting him with a knife.
" I pause, the memory still vivid. "I didn't think.
I just felt the snap behind my eyes, the cold clarity that comes right before the first strike. "
"You were protecting him.”
"Yes. But my foster dad saw something else in my eyes afterward.
Satisfaction, not just anger. He was ex-military and spent the next year teaching me to control it.
Said if I was going to be violent, I should at least be disciplined.
" I pause. "He died a year later, a heart attack.
I was back in the system within a week."
"You've been fighting your whole life," she observes softly.
"That day was the first time I understood what I was really capable of. What was inside me." I turn toward her in the darkness. "With you, I don't feel like I have to choose between the monster and the man. You see both, and you're still here."
"I know what I’m choosing." She finds my hand in the dark and laces her fingers through mine.
I kiss her forehead. "Get some sleep. I'll wake you if anything changes."
She curls up against me, her body gradually relaxing as sleep claims her. I remain awake, alert to every sound, every shift in the house's atmosphere. Outside, the night is alive with quiet movement.
My earpiece crackles softly. "Got movement on the south side," Jackson says. "Two guys checking things out."
"I see them," I whisper, glancing at the monitor on the nightstand, careful not to wake Ellie.
A minute later, Gabriel's voice comes through. "Handled. Took their comms and dropped them a couple of miles south. They'll live, but they won't be calling home anytime soon."
"They'll be missed. How's our timeline looking?"
"Worse," Jackson confirms. "Expect company around dawn. 5:30 maybe."
"Got it. Everyone stay sharp."
I look down at Ellie's sleeping form, memorizing the peaceful lines of her face in the faint moonlight that filters through the blackout curtains.
In a few hours, that peace will be shattered.
I brush a strand of hair from her face, allowing myself this small liberty while she sleeps. I've brought this danger to her door.
"I'm sorry for everything I've done, and everything I'm about to do," I whisper. "I love you."