I move to the kitchen island where she'd been standing when I arrived, running my fingers along the granite surface while I try to organize my thoughts. Coming here was supposed to be about figuring out who's using my signature to kill innocent people. Instead, it's become about confronting what I threw away nine years ago and discovering that it's transformed into something I'm not sure I'm equipped to handle.
The shower is still running, steam probably fogging the mirrors in whatever bathroom she's claimed as her sanctuary. Ipicture her under the hot water, washing away the scent of our encounter, trying to regain the careful control that got disrupted the moment I kissed her. Or maybe she's not trying to forget at all. Maybe she's replaying it the same way I am, analyzing every moment for meaning and possibility.
Maybe she's as affected by this reunion as I am, despite the power games and calculated cruelty.
The thought sends heat racing through my chest, because it suggests that what we had wasn't just teenage infatuation or trauma bonding. It suggests that some connections transcend time and distance and all the careful walls people build to protect themselves from their own desires.
It suggests that walking away from her was the biggest mistake of my life.
But it also suggests that she's not going to make it easy for me to fix that mistake. Time-fermented heartbreak doesn't cease to exist because of one desperate encounter in an immaculate living room.
If anything, what just happened was her way of showing me exactly what I lost, exactly what I threw away because I was too afraid to trust that she could handle the truth about what we might become together.
She's not the girl who needed saving anymore.
She's the woman who could destroy me with a phone call, who could make me beg for the privilege of her attention, who could use my own methods against me if she decided I was a threat worth eliminating.
The irony is staggering.
I spent so long telling myself that walking away gave her a chance at the normalcy I wasn’t capable of. Yet, like fulfilling a prophecy, she became dark and dangerous withoutme, shaped by abandonment rather than partnership, learning to navigate moral complexity alone rather than with someone who understood the weight of necessary violence. Either way, I let her down.
The shower shuts off, and I hear movement in the back of the apartment. Drawers opening, the soft sound of fabric against skin, the small noises of someone getting dressed in a private space. I stay where I am, not moving toward the sound, respecting the boundaries she's established even as every instinct I have urges me to follow, to continue whatever conversation we started with that kiss.
Because that's what it was, despite the gun and the anger and the way she made me kneel—a conversation. The first honest communication we've had since our correspondence, conducted through touch and dominance and the kind of raw honesty that only comes when all pretense has been stripped away.
She wanted me to understand what I'd lost?Mission fucking accomplished.
Now I need to figure out if there's any way to earn back what I threw away, or if this encounter was just her way of showing me exactly how completely I'd destroyed any chance we might have had.
Twenty minutes pass before she reappears, and when she does, it's clear that Dr. Lila North is back in control. She's wearing a silk robe that probably costs more than most people's monthly salary, her hair damp but already styled, lips glossy with some balm.
But she's also clearly trying to tempt me, the robe just loose enough to hint at what's underneath, her movements deliberately casual in ways that draw attention to every curve.Another test, maybe, or another form of psychological warfare. Showing me what I can see but not touch, what I might have earned if I'd made different choices nine years ago.
I bite back the surge of desire that threatens to derail my focus and force myself to concentrate on why I'm really here. Not to relitigate the past or to grovel for forgiveness I probably don't deserve, but to figure out who's using my signature to kill innocent people and what they want from both of us.
Professional concerns. Immediate threats. Things that matter more than my personal regrets, no matter how they're eating away at my chest like acid.
"You good?" she asks, settling onto the couch across from me with the kind of casual grace that suggests this is her territory and I'm just visiting. The power dynamic is clear—she's in control of this conversation, this space, this entire situation.
"Just fine," I say, keeping my voice neutral despite the way the silk robe shifts when she moves. "We need to talk about the murders."
Something flickers in her expression—approval, maybe, that I'm staying focused on business instead of trying to revisit what just happened between us. "Yes, we do. Let me show you what I have."
She moves to a cabinet near the window, retrieving what looks like a police file folder along with several evidence envelopes. When she returns to the couch, she spreads everything across the coffee table with the kind of methodical precision I remember from watching her help position her father's body.
"Marcus Chen first," she says, sliding crime scene photos toward me. "Investment banker, lived alone, found by a neighbor. Positioning matches your historical work exactly—arms at ninety degrees, head tilted fifteen degrees right, legs straight with feet twelve inches apart."
I study the photographs with clinical detachment, noting details that confirm her assessment. The positioning is perfect, identical to my historical signature down to the smallest measurements. Whoever did this has studied my work with obsessive attention to detail.
"Chest cavity?" I ask, though I already know the answer from what she told me earlier.
"Opened and sutured closed, but empty. No confession recording, no personal items, nothing that would justify the violence." She slides another photograph toward me, a close-up of the suturing pattern. "The thread work is amateur but deliberate. Someone who understands the technique but lacks professional training."
"Like someone who learned from studying crime scene photos rather than hands-on experience," I observe, noting the slight irregularities in stitch spacing that suggest theoretical knowledge rather than practiced skill.
"Exactly." She pulls out an evidence envelope, extracting a small cream-colored card with careful precision. "This was found underneath Chen's left hand, tucked so carefully it was almost missed during initial processing."
She hands me the card, and I feel ice water in my veins as I read the two letters written in careful block script: D.J.
