Ailish
The morning starts with coffee, three overlapping to-do lists, and the faint, familiar ache of exhaustion that has settled into my bones these days.
Declan has not called. Not last night, not this morning. He kissed me in my own office, walked out without a word, and has been a closed door ever since. I've decided I'm not going to be the one who mentions it.
I’m halfway through reviewing the updated logistics Liam pulled from me yesterday when he appears in the doorway of my office—tie slightly askew, expression tight.
That’s never a good sign.
“I set you up a meeting with the commercial real estate group,” he adds. “The one we talked about last month.”
I straighten in my chair. “The Midtown properties? I thought those were being shelved until Q4.”
“They were. But the Italians want us to revisit the joint investment sooner. They think it could stabilize our image.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Today at noon.”
It’s already ten. Short notice—but nothing unusual. Declan used to do that to me all the time.
The thought of him has me sighing. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll go as soon as I finish—”
His phone pings, and he pulls it out of his pocket, a worry line creasing his forehead. I almost feel bad for being so frustrated with him. He is under a lot of pressure lately.
“Actually…” He exhales. “Something came up. They need to move it. They asked if you could come tonight instead. They’ll make sure they make you a drink. Good hospitality.”
My stomach dips in a way I can’t name. “Evening? How late?”
“Eleven.”
That late would mean the building is mostly cleared out, the sidewalks dead, loneliness settling over the city in cold pockets of air. I don’t like it, but Liam is already grabbing his phone, already thinking about three other crises. I’m not going to make this meeting harder than it needs to be.
Besides, I need to keep the little bit of trust we have left between us.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll go.”
He nods, touches my shoulder briefly—distracted affection—and leaves. I sit for a moment after he’s gone, staring at the papers in front of me without seeing a single line.
Something about the change makes my skin crawl. But I don’t have a reason to object. Not without sounding paranoid.
So I make sure I ready everything to go.
The meeting is dull. Two men in suits too expensive for their knowledge level. A slideshow that barely loads. Assurances about zoning regulations and long-term potential that I’ve already read twice in the proposal packet.
The alcohol is cheap too.
I smile, nod, ask the right questions, pretend I don’t see their eyes flick to my neckline whenever they think I’m not looking.
By the time I leave, I’m restless and annoyed. I figure I’ll stretch my legs with a stroll past a few windows. It’ll also allow me to make sure nobody is following me.
The city feels wrong the moment I step out of sight of the building where the meeting was held.
Not dangerous, not yet—just… slanted. As if the night is leaning toward me at an uncomfortable angle. The sky is bruised purple, streetlights flickering in irregular pulses. Somewhere distant, a siren wails, thin and tired, swallowed fast by the empty streets.
I walk, conscious of every sound—the scrape of a shoe sole behind me, the tick of cooling metal from a parked car, the hum of power lines overhead.
I try to convince myself the bad feeling is just nerves. But instincts never lie. Not in our world.
I flick a quick glance at the nearest shop window as I pass. My reflection is pale, tense, jaw set tight. Behind me, nothing. Just the shadow of a lamppost stretching long across the sidewalk.
I keep going.
At the next window, I check again—more discreetly this time, pretending to adjust the strap of my purse.
Still nothing.
But the skin between my shoulder blades prickles. That quiet, animal part of myself—the part I’ve tried to train but never perfected—starts whispering run, run, run.
I force myself not to. Running without proof makes you prey.
The third window is a hairline crack in the facade of a boutique. Easy to see through. Easy to catch movement in.
And I do.
Just a shift in mass. A subtle turn of a man’s shoulders. The quiet echo of steps perfectly matched to mine.
My breath stutters. My pace quickens—not so much that it looks like panic, but enough that my pulse trips over itself.
The alley is coming up on my right. Narrow. Dim. A dead zone for cameras. I brace, step past it—
A hard hand snaps around my wrist. Another clamps over my mouth before I can scream.
I’m dragged backward so violently my heels scrape the concrete. My shoulder collides with brick, a shockwave of pain flaring down my arm. The cold wall steals the heat from me instantly.
“Quiet,” someone hisses—female, sharp, accented. She smells faintly of iron and cheap perfume. Her breath hits my ear, too close.
I try to scream anyway, but a palm smothers the sound. My heartbeat rises to a frantic drumbeat.
The second attacker—the man—wrenches my arm up behind my back. The angle is punishing, and cruel. A bolt of pain shoots down to my fingers. His grip is iron.
The alley swallows us whole.
I thrash on instinct, but they’re coordinated in a way that tells me they’ve done this dozens of times before. Maybe hundreds.
The woman shoves me harder into the wall. “Stop fighting.”
It’s the voice that confirms it. An accent like Nadia’s.
They’re not here to kidnap me. They’re here to stage something.
Fear twists cold inside my stomach. The man leans into me, breath hot and heavy against my cheek. “Pretty girl. No fuss. Come quietly.”
A wave of nausea rolls through me. His proximity. His entitlement. His confidence. Confidence only comes from believing they’ll get away with it.
And they won’t. Not unless I let them.
I draw in a sharp breath through my nose and slam my head backward with as much force as I can manage. My skull connects with his chin. Not enough to break anything—but enough to surprise him.
His grip tightens reflexively, loosening for just a moment at the wrist.
That moment is everything. I bite down on the woman’s hand. Hard. I taste blood, metallic and warm, on my tongue. She shrieks, yanking away, swearing viciously in Russian.
The man curses and shifts his stance to regain control.
I don’t let him. I twist, drop my weight, and kick backward—heel-to-bone into his shin. His leg buckles.
I shove the woman’s ribs with everything I can muster.
She’s smaller than I expected. My elbow connects sharply, and she goes stumbling sideways.
The man grabs my coat, jerking me back. Buttons pop. Fabric rips. I spin, slam my fist into his throat—not a proper hit, not enough to disable him, but enough to disrupt his breathing.
Enough to run.
I bolt, sprinting blindly out of the alley and into the open street. My chest burns. My legs scream. My lungs feel too tight.
I scream—loud, ragged, desperate. It tears at my throat. It echoes off the surrounding buildings.
The woman doesn’t chase me this time—she vanishes, melting into the shadows like smoke.
But the man is fast. Too fast.
I feel fingers snag my hair, wrenching me back with brutal force. My scalp explodes with pain. I scream again—this time from pure fear—as he drags me toward the alley mouth.
“You don’t scream,” he snarls in my ear. “You make this easy.”
I claw at his hands, nails scraping skin, but he’s strong, and I’m losing leverage. My heel slips. My breath is swallowed by panic.
Then—
A sound breaks through the night. A familiar voice ripped from raw instinct.
Declan.
He crashes into the man with catastrophic speed. Not controlled, not measured—feral. The impact slams the attacker off his feet. Declan’s shoulder drives into his ribs with enough force to send a crack through the alley like a snapped branch.
The man hits the ground, wheezing. He tries to crawl away.
Declan doesn’t let him.
He drags the man up by his collar and smashes him against the wall so hard my teeth clench. The man’s head whips back, cracking against brick. Declan follows with a punch—one, two, three—each one unbearably precise and devastating.
Blood sprays. Bone gives. Declan doesn’t stop, though.
His jaw is clenched so tightly the muscles quiver. His eyes are bottomless, black with hatred and adrenaline, and something far more frightening—fear for me.
“Declan,” I whisper, voice trembling. He doesn’t hear. Or maybe he does and refuses to respond.
The attacker slips to the ground, choking on his own blood. Declan grabs him by the throat and slams him up again, eyes wild.
“Who sent you?” he growls.
The man can’t answer—can’t speak. Declan doesn’t care. His fist rises again—
“Declan!” My voice cracks. “Stop!”
For a fraction of a second, he turns his head toward me. That sliver of hesitation is the only thing preventing the attacker from dying right then.
But the man makes one fatal mistake: he reaches for a knife. Declan sees the movement. And ends it.
Effortless. Efficient. A snap. A collapse, and the alley goes still.
Declan breathes. Broken, ragged breaths, like he's coming down from a blackout. Then he looks at me, and the rage goes out of him all at once, the way a fire dies when someone shuts the door on the air.
He crosses to me in three long strides. His hands hover over my arms, my shoulders, my face, like touching me will make it worse.
"Ailish." His voice is shredded. "Look at me."
I do.
He scans my face, my arms, the marks already darkening across my skin. His jaw tightens at every one.
"Did they cut you?"
"No." My voice isn't steady. "They tried to grab me."
"You're hurt."
"I'm alive. And I can walk."
It's the wrong thing to say. Something in him softens at it, and softness is worse. His eyes flick toward the shape on the ground behind him, then back to me, and when they land they stay.
"Hospital," he says.
"No."
"Ailish."
"No." Sharper this time, because I can already see him deciding. "Not tonight. Not with questions, not with a chart, not with someone in intake connecting a Russian corpse in an alley to a woman who works for Liam Costello."
He swears under his breath, something vicious and helpless.
"You should have called me." He isn't looking at me now. "The second the meeting moved. The second the time changed. You should have."
"I didn't know." My hands won't stop. I watch them shake like they belong to somebody else. "I didn't know anything was wrong until it was already happening."
"We need to get further from here. Before someone else comes looking."
And there it is, the thing I've been bracing for since the moment I recognized his voice. A safehouse. A door that locks from the outside. Groceries delivered by whoever's least busy. Nadia sitting on a stairwell floor saying I'm stuck here waiting for Liam to decide I exist again.
"Give me a minute," I say. "Not a car. Not a room. A minute."
"Walking isn't safe right now."
"Neither is anything else."
He rubs a slow hand down his face, and for a second I watch him lose the argument he was never really having. He exhales, a sound full of resignation and fear and something dangerously close to relief that I'm still breathing at all.
"All right." Quiet. "We'll walk. Just for a minute."
He offers his hand.
I take it. His fingers wrap around mine, warm and steady, and he doesn't let go as we step out of the alley and into the street, past the blood drying on his knuckles and the thing behind us neither of us is going to name tonight.
That's when I feel it.
He's shaking.