Chapter 5 Good Girl Meets
Bad Press
Delilah
He said ask.
So, I do.
"That was you." Not a question. The photo is still vivid behind my eyes younger, sharper, expensive suit and a jaw that could cut glass. Bishop Morgan, standing outside a nightclub with his name in the headline. Club Eidolon's Golden Boy Falls from Grace.
He doesn't confirm. Doesn't deny. Just looks at the table like it said something offensive.
"It's old news," he says finally.
"It was open on your laptop."
"I was reading something else."
"Bishop." I wait until he looks at me. "You told me to ask. So, I'm asking."
The silence stretches. He's weighing something how much, how honest, how far he's willing to go with a woman sitting in his kitchen in his shirt at eight in the morning.
Then his shoulders drop. Just slightly. Just enough.
"That was me," he says.
"Club Eidolon." I say it out loud so he can't shrink it back into something manageable. "The article called you their golden boy."
"The article called me a lot of things."
"Were they wrong?"
His hand tightens around his mug. He doesn't drink. "No."
I wait.
He talks.
"Club Eidolon isn't the kind of organization you read about in a lifestyle column." His voice is flat. Careful. Like he's choosing each word before he lets it out. "The nightclub was a front. Most of it was."
"For what?"
"Moving money. Running favors. Making sure the right people stayed comfortable and the wrong people stayed quiet." He looks at his hands. "I ran their legitimate operations. Venues, contracts, events. I was good at it because I could walk into any room and not look like what I was."
"What were you?"
A pause. Long enough that I think he won't answer.
"Useful." The word comes out ugly. "For a long time, I was very useful to very dangerous people and I told myself that was enough."
The kitchen feels smaller than it did a minute ago. Outside the window the lake is silver and still, morning mist sitting low on the water. Normal. Quiet. Completely at odds with the man across this table and the life he's describing like it happened to someone else.
"There was an incident," he continues. "Public. Messy. The kind of thing that ends up in the press when someone decides they need a story told a certain way." He shakes his head. "I handled it the only way I knew how and it blew up anyway."
"The article said bar fight."
"The article said what they wanted it to say."
I think about the quote I read. Morgan thought the rules didn't apply to him. He found out they do. Anonymous. Vicious. The kind of line someone crafts, not stumbles into.
"They set you up," I say.
"They let me fall." His jaw tightens. "There's a difference. Setting up takes effort. Letting someone fall just takes patience and a good story."
That lands somewhere tender. I think about every time I smiled through something that hurt because making a scene would've cost more than staying quiet. Every time I made myself smaller so the people around me could stay comfortable. Agreeable. Easy. The good girl who never caused problems.
Patient. Quiet. Useful.
I recognize that shape.
"So, you left," I say.
"They made it clear I was done. I got out before they changed their minds about what done meant." He glances toward the window. "Bought this place. Took the marina job. Learned how to fix engines and file permits and talk to people who don't know my name or care who I used to be."
"Do you miss it?"
The question catches him. I can tell by the slight pause before his expression locks back down.
"No," he says. Then, quieter: "I miss knowing what I was good at. That's not the same thing."
It isn't. I understand that too, in a smaller way. I was good at being what everyone needed. Organized, reliable, agreeable Delilah who never missed a deadline or caused a scene. I was excellent at a life I didn't choose.
Missing the competence isn't the same as missing the cage.
I wrap both hands around my mug and let the warmth seep into my fingers.
The bag of clothes he left outside my door this morning sits unopened on the counter. I haven't touched it. Changing felt like admitting the night was over.
"Why do they keep coming back?" I ask. "If you're out, you're out. Why the SUV last night?"
"Because out isn't really out with them." He says it without heat. Just fact. "I know things. I know people. I know how they move and what they owe and who owes them. That doesn't expire." A beat. "They like having something to hold over you. Keeps the leash short even when they're not pulling it."
"Are they going to come back again?" "Probably."
"Are you in danger?"
"I'm manageable."
Not a no. I file it away next to all the other things he's said sideways instead of straight.
The morning has settled around us. Somewhere down the shore a radio plays, tinny and distant. A door bangs. The marina is waking up and we are sitting here in the middle of something I don't have a name for yet.
I look at him across the table. The tattoos climbing his forearms. The careful way he holds himself, like he's always braced for impact. The mug he keeps picking up and setting back down without drinking from.
He's been punishing himself. I don't know for what exactly. The incident. The club. The choices he made and the ones that got made for him. But it's there in every careful inch of distance he keeps. In the way he said useful like it was a confession.
"Bishop." I wait until his eyes come to mine. "Are you dangerous?"
He doesn't flinch. Doesn't reach for something softer. He sits with the question like he's done it before, turned it over in the dark when there was no one around to see him do it.
"I used to be," he says. "I'm trying very hard not to be anymore."
The most honest thing anyone has said to me in years. Maybe ever.
I open my mouth to say what, I'm not entirely sure when the knock hits the door. Three times. Hard. The kind that doesn't apologize for itself.
Bishop is on his feet before I finish turning my head. His whole-body changes shoulders back, jaw set, eyes going somewhere cold and distant. The man who was just sitting across from me telling me the truth disappears behind something older and more dangerous.
He looks at me once. Points at the hallway.
I don't argue. I take my mug and I go. But I don't go far enough not to hear.