15. Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Alex
Icut across the street, my pace breaking into a sprint the moment the shop comes into view.
Headlights wash over the parking lot. A car door gapes open. A man stands pressed into her space, violating every instinct I have. Too close. Too aggressive. His hands are on her—possessive, demanding, unwelcome.
The moment I see her tense beneath his grip, something dark shifts inside me.
Her fucking ex. Cole.
I recognize him instantly. I’ve memorized his file. Every report. Every accusation. I know who he is and what he’s capable of.
The space separating us disappears beneath my feet. As I get closer, his expression becomes clear. Dominant rage—absolute audacity that he still has the right to corner her.
Lina tries to escape him. He advances.
My vision tunnels.
For a fleeting moment, the world narrows to a single point. The traffic fades. The small town disappears. Even the music drifting from nearby cars vanishes beneath the thunder of my blood rushing through my veins.
Cole’s hand is buried in her hair. His body crowds hers as she struggles to pull away. I watch her feet shift backward. Watch the tension in her shoulders. Watch the fight in her.
I fucking snap.
No anger. Anger burns hot and reckless. This is colder than that. Sharper. The kind of cold that locks into place before a job, before a fight, before someone gets hurt.
Years of training and violence have conditioned my mind to recognize threats before other people notice them. My body reaches the conclusion before my brain can fully process it.
She’s in danger. And he’s the fucking danger.
A familiar calm washes over me, dark and absolute.
Every distraction falls away. Every emotion gets shoved aside.
The world reduces itself to simple calculations: distance, timing, force.
The fastest path between where I am and where I need to be.
The most efficient way to separate him from her.
The most efficient way to make sure he never puts his hands on her again.
I hit the parking lot at full speed.
Cole doesn’t see me until my hands are on him. One second he has her up against the car, the next, he’s airborne.
I rip him away from her and launch him across the pavement with enough force to send him crashing to the ground. His body skids across the asphalt before coming to a stop.
Not hard enough in my opinion.
I position myself between them before he can recover. All the muscles in my body are locked tight. Every instinct is demanding permission to finish what I started.
One wrong move from him. That’s all it would take for me to snap his neck like a twig.
“You touch her again,” I utter, “and I’ll make tonight the biggest mistake of your life.”
The words are measured. Controlled.
But beneath them lurks something far less civilized. Something that wants blood.
For a moment, I shut my eyes, pushing the taste for violence down. Once I have it contained, I turn toward Lina.
She’s pressed against her car, breathing hard. Her hair is disheveled. Her hands are shaking. There are fresh scrapes on her skin, and fury burns brightly behind her eyes.
Relief hits me so hard it nearly hurts.
She’s upright and breathing. She’s still fighting.
I’ve seen enough victims to know the difference. Fear is there, certainly. But so is defiance. The same stubborn determination I’ve witnessed every day since arriving in this town. The same strength that keeps her moving forward despite everything life has thrown at her.
The file never captured that part of her—the fire in her.
I come nearer, speaking more quietly. “You’re safe,” I tell her. “I’ve got you.”
The words leave my mouth before I’ve had time to think about them. And the moment I say them, I realize they’re true. In more ways than they should be.
“Who the hell is this?” Cole slurs, pointing in my direction.
He pushes himself to his feet, swaying as he does. For a second, I think he’s going to lose the battle with gravity and end up back on the ground. He catches himself at the last moment.
Drunk. Definitely drunk.
He’s several inches shorter than me, maybe five-seven. Blonde hair, blue eyes, late thirties, according to his file, though you’d never guess it by looking at him. Years of hard drinking have carved deep lines into his face, aging him a decade beyond his years.
Cole scans over Lina’s body. The coat barely tied closed, with a black lace bra peeking out. Her feet bare against the pavement floor. Heels abandoned on the ground a few feet away, dropped or kicked off.
She’s shaking, but she’s still standing.
Recognition twists his face into something ugly.
“Is this the guy?” He sneers. “The one you went to fuck tonight? Is this who you wore that fucking outfit for?”
Lina stiffens. I sense it, like a shift in air pressure.
“Cole,” she snaps, “stop—“
“So that’s it, huh?” He barrels on, voice rising. “You leave me, dress up like a fucking—“
I step forward. One punch. Precise.
He drops like a puppet’s strings were cut, hitting the pavement, unmoving.
Silence crashes down around us.
I pull my phone from my pocket and dial 911.
“I need officers and an ambulance,” I say when the operator answers. “An assault has occurred. The suspect is now unconscious. He was attacking a woman. The situation is under control, and the woman is safe.”
I give the 911 operator details of our whereabouts, end the call, and turn to Lina.
When I turn toward her, the difference in our size hits me all at once.
She’s tiny.
Five-two at most, barely reaching my shoulder. I have to lower my head to meet her gaze, and still, she seems impossibly small facing me.
A full foot separates us in height.
Enough that I’m suddenly aware of every inch of space I occupy. Every pound of muscle. Every way I could be perceived as a threat by someone who has spent years learning to fear men bigger than her.
I widen my stance without thinking, shift my weight back—to make myself less imposing. I’ve learned how size can seem overwhelming when it’s used wrong. I won’t be that. Not here. Not now.
She’s shaken, still riding the aftermath of fear, and the last thing she needs is another man looming over her. So I adjust. Slow my movements. Keep my hands visible. Let my voice drop instead of my body crowding hers.
The difference is there—solid, undeniable—but it’s mine to manage. And at this moment, the sole concern is her sense of security in my proximity.
“He should be held accountable,” I say, steady and certain. “I plan to press charges, and you should consider it as well.”
She swallows hard, nodding.
Good.
I’d rather not tell her what to do—only give her options and allow her the choice.
Everything in Cole’s file says this should have happened years ago.
Cole should have faced legal consequences after the accident.
The report had facts. Cole had enough drugs in his system to take down an elephant, drove and then wrapped his car around a pole, and put Lina in the hospital. She was eight months pregnant and had emergency surgery. Their baby didn’t survive.
Instead, Cole’s parents paid for lawyers to smooth it over. Charges disappeared, and he walked.
She filed for divorce two days after their baby’s funeral.
From what I’ve read, Cole is an alcoholic, semi-drug user with a pattern.
Bar fights, reckless behavior, violent when drunk. Trouble clings to him, but consequences never do. Not when money is always within reach.
Tonight, that ends.
I position myself between Lina and his unconscious body as sirens approach in the distance.
I’ll make damn sure Cole doesn’t get off this time.
The sirens are closer now, red and blue bleeding into the edges of the night.
Lina stands beside her Bronco, arms wrapped around herself, coat pulled tightly closed now. She’s holding it together, but barely.
She observes me, eyes focused despite the shock. “How did you end up here?”
It’s a fair question.
“My Airbnb’s around the corner,” I tell her. “I was out on a late-night run, and I heard screaming.”
It’s true, but not the entire truth.
She nods, taking a moment to absorb it before letting out a shaky breath. “Lucky timing.”
Yeah. Something like that.
What I don’t say is that she was the reason for the run, that watching her leave earlier, dressed up, confident, headed somewhere I couldn’t follow without crossing lines, messed with my head more than it should have.
I needed motion. Distance. Something to bleed the tension off before it turned reckless.
I also don’t tell her I was the one who sent the DoorDash driver to EJ’s house.
Fucking Wingstop was all it took to distract him from touching her any further.
The decision came the second Reese flagged her messages—harmless on the surface, flirty, familiar. Until EJ typed “you won’t see it coming.”
That was the moment my body went still.
Surprises are variables. Variables get people hurt.
That’s when I moved. Got into my gear and bugged his place.
Luckily, this fuck boy is far more interested in something like free food. Especially after he hit a blunt. Which EJ did hours before Lina showed up.
So I sent the wings. It worked.
The camera confirmed it—him opening the bag like it was Christmas morning, sauce already on his fingers before he sat.
They sat and talked over spicy wings. There was no urgency, no setup, no weapons or traps. Just greasy takeout and a man whose attention span was hijacked by sodium, weed, and free convenience.
That’s when I stopped watching.
Because even if the wings hadn’t done the trick—if she’d walked in while he was still thinking with his dick first—I wouldn’t have stayed. I would never watch that.
I would never want to sit there, hiding in the shadows, listening to her laugh with him, hearing sounds meant for someone else. Never let her voice become something I associate with another man’s pleasure. That would be my own kind of absolute fucking torture.
So I shut the video feed down the second I confirmed she was safe. Pulled on my hoodie and laced my shoes tighter than necessary.
I convinced myself I was being professional. That I’ve verified the threat level and disengaged like I’m supposed to.
I went for the run. I stopped tracking.
Then, I missed the alerts. That’s on me.
The weight of knowing I let my guard down because I couldn’t stand the idea of watching her choose someone else has me reeling.
Six weeks. That’s all it took. And it already appears to be too much.
She’s still standing. Still here. And something roots itself beneath my breastbone
I will not be that fucking stupid again.