Ailish
Three days pass, and every one of them feels like a test. I keep moving through Liam’s offices as if nothing is wrong, my schedule uninterrupted, my temperament sharp: morning meeting, menu revisions for the charity gala, two hours reviewing supply routes with Kellan, and a check-in with the Italians that should have been simple but isn’t anymore.
Everyone is polite, respectful, careful. I wonder how many of them are watching me for cracks.
But the worst part is I keep replaying those moments with Declan.
I feel dumb and weak because for just a second, he gave me a spark of hope. I should have let him go the moment I had to turn on him to get him under control and help Liam.
But I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit I still want what I want. And it’s him.
It doesn’t matter, though, because we have to get over our shit. Drama will not help us have a united front, especially now that I’m under such suspicion.
I walk to the underground garage alone. The air down here is colder, and the sound of my heels moves through it—slow, controlled, each step placed with deliberate poise.
My car sits in its usual place, sleek and black and immaculate.
The detailers did their job, but they didn’t erase everything.
There is a faint pattern drawn across the hood, nearly invisible unless you look at it from the right angle: three angled lines.
Not a scratch. Not a key. Drawn, deliberately, by someone who wanted it found by exactly one person.
I know what it is because Nadia told me once, in a kitchen at two in the morning, that the Russians don’t threaten people. They label them. Three lines means chosen. It means a name has moved from a list to an assignment, and somebody has already been paid.
I stand there in the cold with my keys in my hand and do not touch the hood.
I take the stairs instead of the elevator, because the elevator has one door and I want two.
On the landing between floors, I hear quiet breathing. Shallow, uneven, the kind of breathing people make when they're trying not to cry.
Nadia sits on the steps, knees pulled up, hands clasped around them. Her eyes are red, but she’s not crying anymore. She looks like someone who’s already gone through the worst part and is just trying to remember how to hold her own bones.
“I don’t want comfort,” she mutters, not even looking at me.
“I didn’t bring comfort,” I reply, sitting beside her on the concrete. The cold bites through my coat.
“Then why are you here?”
“Because someone marked my car.”
Nadia stiffens. She doesn’t ask what the mark was. She knows.
The silence between us stretches long enough that I hear the hum of the ventilation system behind the walls.
I study her face. Nadia is usually impossible to rattle. Even when her past leaks through the cracks, she has a way of stitching it back into something that looks like composure. Not tonight.
"Your turn," I say. "You weren't sitting in a stairwell about the weather."
She's quiet long enough that I think she won't answer. Then, "[NAME] surfaced. Someone put her name on a list three days ago and nobody has seen her since."
The name means nothing to me and everything to her. I don't ask which list.
Nadia nods, slow, like she's answering a question I didn't ask. "You're the point of this now. Not me."
“Why?”
“Because you’re visible,” she replies. “You’re close to Liam. You’re new. You’re clean. You’re what they can corrupt without firing a gun. And I am nowhere to be found. Though, I should be worried you coming here has them knowing now.”
The words sit heavy between us. I straighten, bracing my arms on my knees. “I’m not corruptible.”
“That’s not the point,” Nadia says. “They don’t need you to actually betray anyone. They just need Liam or the Italians to think you did.”
“Then why the hood? If they want Liam to doubt me, they don’t need me to know.”
“Because a frightened person makes different choices than a calm one. They want you moving.” She looks at her hands. “You must remember who I once was for them. They have people whose entire job is watching which way you run.”
I nod, knowing someone she sees like a sister is still in the game.
The temperature in the stairwell seems to drop another degree. I rest my head against the wall and stare up at the fluorescent bulb humming above us. The light flickers, and the whole space feels like a warning.
“So what do I do?”
“You don’t tell Liam any more than you have to,” she says immediately. “You don’t tell Kellan. You don’t tell anyone in the house. You hold still, and you let Declan hunt.”
I nod. “I’ll have to have you moved.”
She scoffs. “I’d rather not be, but Liam will likely insist now. He probably knows you’re here.”
“It’s for your safety,” I try to reassure, but my tone falls flat. I wouldn’t be too happy about being locked up like a prisoner for my safety either.
“It’s because I’m too close to this one.” Her eyes seems haunted, and I wonder if she’s thinking about her friend.
She heads for the door, shoulders squared. I almost tell her to stay with me—but I know better. This conversation is over for now.
I don’t return to my car. I don’t even call Declan. I walk to the river, because something in me needs to see the shape of the city from where it ends—where the tide steals all proof.
The air is sharp and wet. Fog crawls low across the water like someone dragging a sheet. Out past the cranes and shipping containers, the docks rise in a jagged silhouette.
I lean my arms on the cold metal railing and breathe until my lungs slow. I remember Nadia saying she used to speak to walls, not people. I wonder what kind of childhood teaches you that silence is safer than language.
The thought makes my throat ache.
I hear footsteps behind me. Not rushed. Not timid. Heavy, measured steps that announce the person long before they speak.
“Thought you might come here,” Declan says.
I don’t ask how he found me. He always finds me. He stands beside me, hands in his coat pockets, breath ghosting visibly in the early light.
“Three lines on my hood,” I tell him. “Drawn in the dust under the wax.”
“I know.”
He just raises his brow, and I roll my eyes. Of course he’s watching me just as closely as anyone else. I shiver at the thought and wonder if it’s distrust or some other reason.
“I’m tired of being the chess piece,” I reply. “I want to be the player.”
“You are,” Declan murmurs. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be a target or someone who pisses me off.”
Feeling a little brave in the quiet between night and morning, I say, “I thought there were other reasons I piss you off.”
The light before the morning dawn shining off the water catches Declan’s eyes, and I know I shouldn’t have said it. My stomach churns as he reaches out and slides his hand over a strand of my hair.
“Be careful going back.” Then, he slips away before I feel the cold of the absence of his touch.
My bones are on fire as I make my way back to my car, needing to get back home and sleep off whatever hangover is coming from that interaction.
But even once my skin is scrubbed, I’m in my most comfortable pajamas, and my blackout curtains are drawn, I can’t relax.
I hate feeling helpless and hate the idea that there is evidence out there building against me that makes me look like a turncoat. Even more frustrating is the fact that a man who has made himself my enemy is the only one truly believing me and trying to help.
Or at least, that’s how it appears.
I fall asleep with thought of him and am rewarded with memories and fantasies mixing into one.
Declan comes to my door and slips in my bed, stroking my hair just the same as he had earlier. But the intimacy starts bleeding into something more.
Declan’s mouth is soft and searching against my neck, his thumb grazing my jaw, tentative, as if waiting for me to put an end to it.
The heat flares, hungry and unsteady, but even in the dream my mind stutters, catching on the sense of trespass. My body curls into his regardless, and he braces the length of my spine with his hand, slow and certain, kind in a way I hadn’t expected.
He tastes like whiskey and the shadows, like forbidden things.
Declan pulls back and fixes me with that steady, patient look I’d never seen in daylight.
“Why are you fighting so hard?” Dream Declan asks, voice low and impossibly gentle, as if speaking across a confession booth.
I don’t answer, but instead, force my body to relax.
His hand maps the knobs and tension of my body. Thumb brushing the sensitive angle beneath my ear. I can smell the musk of his sweat and the too-smooth glide of his aftershave, so close, almost choking.
The electric charge between us like tripwires; something deep and reckless in me, each nerve ending pinging with the knowledge of how wrong this is, how little I should want it.
I can't move. The blanket holds me down, the mattress warm beneath me, and some dream-deep part of me doesn't want to try.
Declan’s hand moves up, cupping behind my head, drawing me in. His lips find mine—hesitant, rehearsed, as if demonstrating how a kiss should be performed for a police lineup. I shudder, the cold ache of my muscles threaded through with a sharp, searing need.
I give in, my hands finding him, my lips exploring every inch of his mouth. Wanderlust sparks on my tongue as I wish to let it taste the rest of him.
A heavy feeling burns my lungs, and I wake, tangled and shivering from what could never be real.