“It’s not.” He doesn’t move toward me. He stays exactly where he is, hands loose at his sides, like he knows crowding me right now is the worst thing he could do. “A contract means someone put your name on a list and offered money to have it carried out. Six figures. That’s not a grudge, Nora. That’s not someone you cut off in traffic. That’s deliberate, and it’s expensive, and it means whoever wants this has resources.”
My back hits the door. “How do you know all this?” My hand fumbles behind me for the handle. “How do you know what a—who talks like that? Who knows things like that?”
He’s quiet for a beat. And when he answers, his voice is even. “Because it used to be my job.”
Everything in me goes cold and still.
“Your job,” I repeat.
“It was contracted work. For a long time.” He holds my gaze, doesn’t look away from it, doesn’t flinch. “I’m telling you the truth because you deserve it, and because you need to understand who you’re dealing with when I say I can keep you safe. But I need you to hear the other part too.” He takes one slow step, then stops himself. “I would never touch you. Not like that. Not ever. The rules I lived by—there were lines I didn’t cross. Women. Children. Innocents. You’re every one of those things, and you’re—”
He stops. His jaw works. For a second, something moves behind his eyes, something that looks like a man reaching for a word he doesn’t have, doesn’t know how to hold. His hand lifts halfway, like he wants to close the space between us, and then drops.
“You’re mine to protect now,” he says finally, low and rough, like it’s the only thing he’s sure of. “Whether you understand that yet or not.”
I stare at him, my hand still frozen on the door handle. Some rational part of me is screaming to turn it, to run, to get as far from this apartment and this man and his impossible words as I can. He just told me he killed people for money. I should be terrified of him.
But I’m not. That’s the part that doesn’t make sense. Because when he looks at me like that—like I’m something he’d break the world to keep—I don’t feel like prey. I feel like the safest thing in the room.
“You found out today,” I say slowly, the pieces landing one after another. “This morning. That’s why you left. Why you were so distracted.”
“Yeah.”
“You knew before you asked me out.” My voice wavers. “You knew, and you still—the dinner, all of it—”
“None of it was fake.” He says it fast, firm, the first crack of urgency in his control. “I need you to believe that. I’ve been coming to that café for weeks, Nora. Before any of this. The dinner was real. This is real. The contract just means I can’t wait anymore.”
I search his face for the lie. For anything that says he’s only telling me what I want to hear.
I don’t find it.
“So, what happens now?” I ask, barely above a whisper.
“You stay here. With me. Until I find out who’s behind it and I end it.”
“And if I don’t?”
His gaze holds mine, steady and unflinching. “Then you’re out there. Alone. And whoever put that contract out is still looking. I can’t protect you if you’re not where I can see you.”
The choice doesn’t feel like a choice at all. My thoughts race—fear and trust and confusion all tangled together. This is insane. Completely insane. I barely know him. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be considering this.
And yet…
I look at him, really look at him, and all I see is certainty. Protection. Something solid in the middle of all this chaos.
“Okay,” I say quietly.
His shoulders relax just slightly, like he wasn’t sure what I’d say. “Okay?” he repeats.
I nod. “Okay.”
Something shifts in the air again, but this time it’s different. He steps closer, close enough that I can feel the heat from his body. My breath catches without warning. Asher reaches for my hand and tugs me away from the door, pulling me back into the kitchen.
“You’re trusting me,” he says, his voice lower now.
“I am,” I admit, even though it terrifies me.
His hand lifts slowly, like he’s giving me time to stop him, but I don’t. His fingers brush lightly against my cheek, tilting my face up just enough to meet his gaze fully.
