He thinks one growled order is enough to make me obey. Please. I spend my days forcing stubborn, overgrown athletes to do their mobility stretches. I'm immune to meatheads. Except this meathead just made me scream on a therapy table, and he currently looks perfectly capable of dismantling a tank with his bare hands.
We tear through the South Side of the city. He takes a labyrinth of side streets, doubling back twice to ensure we are not followed. The bleeding graze on his shoulder has soaked throughthe rough bandage he must have slapped on himself, staining the collar of his jacket, but he moves the steering wheel with zero hesitation. As a physical therapist, I can see the subtle compensation in his left deltoid. He is in pain. He is ignoring it.
He pulls into the alley behind my apartment building.
My sanctuary. The one place I thought was safe until I found him lurking in the abandoned second-floor unit this morning.
"We're stopping here?" I stare at the brick exterior. "If they know who you are, won't they come here next?"
"The phone is currently in a garbage truck heading south." He cuts the engine. "My secondary comms are ghosted. The perimeter here is secure. Move."
He is out of the vehicle in a flash. He opens my door and hauls me out into the biting wind. His shirt flaps around my thighs. I wrap my arms around myself to ward off the cold.
He escorts me swiftly through the rear entrance, rushing up the internal concrete stairwell. We bypass the ground-floor landing, stopping one flight up at the reinforced steel vault door he installed in the second-floor unit. His new fortress. My own apartment sits directly above it, on the third floor.
He punches a code into a keypad. The deadbolts retract with a series of loud, mechanical clacks. He shoves the door open and pushes me inside, stepping in right behind me and slamming the door shut. He throws three separate manual locks.
The space is a sensory shock.
What was supposed to be a vacant, dusty apartment is a high-tech war room. He must have had a crew working it since before dawn— six monitors already cover the far living room wall. Thestreet, the alley, the stairwell, the roof, the hallway outside my third-floor door. He has eyes on every inch of my existence.
A metal desk in the center, littered with keyboards, hard drives, and tactical gear. An assault rifle rests against the wall. The air smells of hot electronics, gun oil, and him.
He drops his sidearm onto the desk. He sheds his jacket, wincing imperceptibly as the fabric pulls against his torn shoulder. The bloody bandage is a stark white contrast against the tribal ink covering his arms.
He walks to the far window. He shifts the blinds a fraction of an inch, peering out into the street. He stands there in silence. A lethal gargoyle guarding his newly claimed territory.
He is waiting for me to break.
He is waiting for the tears. For the hysterical accusations. For the demands to be let go. He expects me to scream at him for invading my life, for hacking my building, for dragging me into the middle of a twenty-year blood feud between criminal empires.
He expects me to act like a victim.
I refuse.
I take a slow, deliberate breath. The scent of my own arousal mixes with the metallic tang of his blood in the air. I force my shoulders to drop. I lock my knees. I rebuild broken bodies. I thrive on structure. I thrive on control.
This man is a walking incarnation of chaos. He is the violence I have spent my entire adult life trying to avoid.
Staring at his broad, scarred back, I don’t feel fear.
I feel an overwhelming, terrifying pull.
He didn’t abandon me at the clinic. He didn’t use me as a shield. He put himself between me and the bullets. He brought me to his fortress. He built a surveillance network exclusively to watch my door. It is obsessive. It is unhinged.
It is the most fiercely protected I have ever been in my life.
I cross the dark room. The floorboards are cold against my bare feet.
"You’re bleeding," I say. My voice is steady. Calm. Clinical.
He doesn't turn around. His hands rest on the windowsill. "It’s a scratch.”
"It’s a gunshot wound that you keep aggravating because you refuse to stabilize the joint." I stop two feet behind him. "Sit down."
He finally turns. The pale glow from the security monitors catches the sharp angles of his face. His eyes are unreadable. He assesses me, searching for the panic he assumes is hiding just beneath the surface.
"You should be terrified, Priya." His voice is a low gravel rasp. "Those men at the clinic were not there to rob the place. They were an execution squad. My family is at war. My world is composed of blood and collateral damage."
