POV Mara
But I couldn't kill him. Not yet. Not when I needed his contacts, his knowledge, his guilt-driven cooperation to find whoever had painted a target on my back and pulled the trigger on my parents.
I kept the gun trained on him, watching his breath catch and release, watching him understand he'd live another minute, another hour, however long I decided to let him.
"You're going to follow my terms," I said, the words cutting clean through whatever softness had tried to bloom between us. "Every single one."
"Tell me." No hesitation, no negotiation. Just acceptance, like he'd already made peace with whatever price I'd demand.
"You hide nothing. Every contact, every cache, every dirty secret you've been sitting on—it all comes out. No strategic omissions, no protecting your sources. If there's compromising information, if there's something that could burn us both, you tell me anyway."
I let the weight of the gun in my hand remind us both what this was.
"You walk two steps ahead of me where the bullets land first. We find the real traitor, we take them down, and then—only then—I decide what happens to you."
"Agreed." He reached for his phone, movements slow and telegraphed. "That's why I'm showing you everything. Starting with Orchid."
He scrolled through the correspondence, turning the screen toward me.
"We only communicate through this phone. My phone. No audio calls, just text and encrypted file transfers. It's all here." His thumb moved across the screen, revealing weeks of careful exchanges. "My girlfriend never knew about any of this. Orchid only appeared after she died—that's when I started looking for the exit."
The admission landed somewhere soft in my chest, that tender place I kept trying to armor over.
His girlfriend, dead and innocent of his sins. Orchid, born from grief. The parallel to my own story made me want to reach for him and recoil in equal measure.
He set the phone aside and pulled a folded map from his bag, spreading it on the kitchenette table like confession made tangible. His finger traced locations, each mark a secret he was surrendering.
"Storage facility in Queens—emergency cash, original ledgers. Safehouse in Newark. Weapons cache in the Bronx." He looked up, meeting my eyes. "No one else knows these exist. You're the first person I've shown this to who's still breathing."
Something twisted in my chest—this complete surrender, this stripping bare of every defense he had. It should have felt like victory. Instead it felt like watching someone hand over the knife they knew you'd use to gut them.
Silence settled between us like smoke, thick with everything we couldn't say. Hate and grief and necessity all breathing the same air, sharing this cramped space that smelled like his soap and my fear-sweat.
He moved to the floor without being told, back against the door, legs stretched out—a guard dog position that said he understood his role.
"You don't trust me to stay put while you sleep," he said. Not a question.
"I don't trust you to breathe without supervision." I set his gun on the nightstand, close enough to grab if needed. The absence of my Beretta stung fresh, a phantom pain I kept prodding like a bruise.
I stretched out on the couch, staring at the ceiling's water stains that looked like countries I'd never see.
My body ached in too many places—knuckles split from his face, ribs bruised from the guard's fist, something deeper than physical where my parents' absence lived.
"Mara." His voice came soft from the floor. "We'll fix—"
"We'll finish it." I cut him off, sharp enough to draw blood. "Then I'll decide if you get to keep breathing near me."
He nodded once, a shadow movement in my peripheral vision. The fan hummed its white noise lullaby. Neither of us slept. I could tell by his breathing, the way it never quite deepened, and I'm sure he could tell by mine. Two killers playing dead in the dark.
Exhaustion won eventually, dragging me under despite my best intentions.
But the door's soft click yanked me back—hand already reaching for the gun, body coiling to strike—but it was just Adrian, juggling coffee and paper bags that smelled like eggs and redemption.
Fury flashed hot and immediate. I hadn't heard him leave. I hadn't felt the air shift when the door opened.
Then I noticed the blanket across my legs, soft and carefully placed, and the rage complicated into something messier. He'd covered me while I slept, this man I'd promised to maybe kill, and the tenderness of it made me want to scream.
Made me want to crawl into his lap and let him hold me until the shaking stopped.
Made me want to press my mouth to his until I could taste something besides copper and grief.
"I don't need your caretaking," I snapped, shoving the blanket off like it burned.
"You need food. Coffee. Basic human maintenance." He set everything on the table with practiced efficiency. "Call it what you want."
"I call it you trying to manipulate me into forgetting what you owe."
"I pulled you out of that room." His voice stayed maddeningly calm.
"You put me in that room."
"We were both set up." The edge in his voice softened slightly. "The only difference is I had a few hours' head start to see it coming. Breakfast?"
My stomach answered before I could, a mortifying growl that made him smile—God, that smile that still did things to my insides I couldn't afford to feel. That smile that made me remember his mouth on mine, made me wonder what it would taste like now, with truth between us instead of lies.
"Fine." I holstered the gun but not the suspicion, settling across from him at the small table.
He passed me coffee first, like a peace offering, then kept his hands visible on the table—such deliberate transparency it almost made me laugh. Almost.
"We need to go over the plan," he said, unwrapping what turned out to be bodega breakfast sandwiches, the kind of grease-soaked comfort I hadn't let myself want in years.
"After breakfast," I said, already tearing into the sandwich with zero grace, hunger making me reckless.
Egg yolk dripped down my chin, and before I could wipe it away, he was reaching across the table, fingertips angled toward my face with intent that had nothing to do with helpfulness.
I froze, every nerve suddenly electric, my body betraying me with how badly it wanted to lean into his touch. Then my brain caught up and I knocked his hand away hard enough to sting.
"Don't touch me without permission."
"Noted." He pulled his hand back slowly, deliberately, then added with that dangerous half-smile: "Pretty sure you like it though."
The truth of it—the way my skin still burned where he'd almost touched me, the way I could feel the ghost of his fingers—made something violent and wanting twist in my gut.
I ignored the bait, jaw working through another bite of sandwich, trying not to think about his hands, about permission, about all the ways I wanted him to touch me that I could never, ever allow.
"Good to see you have an appetite," he said, watching me demolish the food with something like approval. "You'll need the energy for what's coming."
I looked up, met his eyes with all the darkness I was carrying. "Oh, I have an appetite alright. A thirst, actually. For the blood of everyone involved in my parents' death."
Something flickered across his face—recognition, maybe, or respect for the monster showing through my skin. He nodded slowly, understanding that this hunger went deeper than food, that what I really wanted to devour was revenge itself.
The terms held. For now.