Priya shifts on the leather sofa. The worn cushions pull a soft, involuntary sound from her throat. Her bare legs slide against the leather.
I pivot away from the monitors. The tactical crisis fractures, overridden by a much simpler, instinctive need. She needs warmth. She needs softness. This room is a tomb of weapons, screens, and concrete. It is no place for her.
I step between her parted knees. I slide my uninjured arm under her back and hook my other hand under her thighs. I lift her against me. She weighs nothing. A bundle of heat and stubborn defiance. She murmurs something incoherent, face pressing into the crook of my neck. Her breath ghosts over my throat. The phantom touch brands me deeper than the needle ever did.
I carry her out of the surveillance room. The hallway of the vacant second-floor apartment is pitch black, but I have mapped every floorboard and every shadow. I move in silence. I bring her into the kitchen attached to the main living space.
It is three in the morning. A flickering streetlamp outside bleeds weak orange light through the broken blinds, casting long, sharp shadows across the peeling linoleum floor. The safehouse is stripped bare. A rusted refrigerator. A battered stove. A worn leather sofa pushed against the far wall, angled to avoid line of sight from the windows.
I lower her onto the leather cushions. I reach for the wool blanket folded over the armrest and drag it across her legs.
Her eyes snap open. The transition from sleep to clinical alertness is instantaneous. She doesn't panic. She doesn't scream. She just looks at me, her therapist brain booting up, analyzing the environment, assessing the threat level. Assessing me.
She pulls the collar of my tactical shirt tighter around her throat.
"You're pacing," she says. Her voice is rough from sleep and from screaming my name.
I stop moving. I stand in the center of the kitchen, hands loose at my sides. "I'm securing the perimeter."
"You're wound like a string about to snap." She sits up, crossing her legs under the wool blanket. She refuses to look small. She refuses to act like a victim. "What did you see on those screens, Nico?"
The lie of omission tastes like ash. I know how to interrogate men until they beg for death. I know how to dismantle a human body piece by piece. I do not know how to sit in a dark kitchen at three in the morning and explain to a woman that she is standing at the epicenter of a mafia war.
If I tell her the whole truth right now—not just that the Bellantis own the building next to her clinic, but that the strike force today was riding cover for a live weapons supply run—she will analyze it. She will process the data with that rigid emotional control she uses to survive. She will realize she is collateral damage waiting to happen. Again. She might decide the danger is too high. She might pack a bag. She might run.
I can’t let her run. I won’t let her out of my sight.
"The strike force was sweeping the sector," I say. I keep my voice level. The soldier's mask snaps back into place, cold and impenetrable. The partial truth comes out smooth. "They were protecting the building. That means the operation is bigger than I thought."
She studies my face. Her eyes track the micro-expressions I rarely let slip. She is too smart for a simple brush-off. "A random sweep. That's why you dragged me out of the clinic like the building was coming down?"
"Standard evasion protocol. I don't take chances with unconfirmed variables."
"I'm a variable now?" Her tone is sharp, coated in sarcasm. A defense mechanism. "Good to know. I thought I was just the physical therapist you decided to hold hostage on a desk."
Heat crawls up the back of my neck. "You chose the desk. You chose me. Don't pretend you didn't."
She holds my gaze. A flush of pink colors her cheeks, a stark contrast to the darkness of the room. She doesn't back down. "I chose you. I didn't choose the army of black SUVs rolling up to my workplace. If standard evasion protocol involves almost tearing my clothes off while your bullet wound bleeds out, your military manual is seriously flawed."
A harsh laugh tears out of my throat. It is an unfamiliar sound. "My manual was rewritten the second you walked out of your building and stared at me across the street."
I cross the kitchen. I move to the rusted sink, turn on the tap, and fill a battered aluminum kettle. I set it on the stove and ignite the gas burner with a sharp click. The blue flame flares, casting shadows across my tattooed forearms.
She watches me. "You're making tea."
"You need hydration. Your body just experienced severe adrenaline spikes."
"Are you quoting my own medical advice back to me?"
"I adapt to useful intelligence."
She leans her head back against the leather sofa. The fight drains out of her posture, replaced by a profound, bone-deep exhaustion. The trauma of the day is catching up to her. The attack. The extraction. The violent claiming. She is human, andthe human body can only process so much chaos before it demands rest.
"You're lying to me," she says quietly. The sarcasm is gone. Only the truth remains. "I fix broken people, Nico. I watch how they hold their shoulders. I watch how they compensate for injuries they refuse to acknowledge. You're compensating right now. You're holding something back."
I turn around. I lean against the counter, crossing my arms. The gunshot wound screams in protest, a searing pain ripping through my torn muscle. I ignore it. Pain is just data.
"I’m the lethal end of a family that survives on violence," I say, my voice dropping low and flat. "I’m holding a thousand things back from you, Priya. All of them are designed to keep you safe."
