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But there was a sound, and every protective instinct I possessed flared to the surface. Pausing to twist back and get my gun from my nightstand, I paid utmost attention for any more sounds.

It should’ve been impossible for someone to break in.

Guards patrolled. Security alarms would go off. This place was like a fortress, yet I knew all too well that anything was possible. I’d lived through too many experiences of the supposedly impossible things happening. That was why it paid to always be on guard, to never relax. I’d been personally overseeing Louisa and Brady’s safety here, and I wasn’t about to stop.

I crept out of my room that was down the hall from both Louisa’s and Brady’s. Gun up, crouching with a bend in my knees, I slipped out of my room.

The second I stepped into the corridor, I saw him.

One man, quietly walking up to get to her room. His feet didn’t make much of a sound as he placed them on the carpet. Arms up. Gun out. Mask on.

As I carefully exited the room and followed him, I noticed the stealthy athleticism in his steps. The cautious hesitation that only a practiced and trained predator would have.

It wouldn’t save him now. Not as I came up behind him and hunted him down.

He spun at the last second before I could tackle him. Using my gun would be faster, but if I could remove the threat without any loud noises like gunfire and spare Brady that fear, I would.

I braced for his deflecting hit, taking the impact of his arm in my stomach. It stunned me for only a blip of a second, and I plowed through the pain. I ignored the ache. Wrapping my arms around him and relying on my muscle memory of all the martial arts moves I’d learned, I hit his arm to get the gun out of his hand.

He resisted, meeting me hit for hit, jab for jab. He didn’t pull the trigger and shoot at me, but as we wrestled on the floor, I fought to get the gun out of his hand. I had to get that thing out of his grip. I couldn’t allow anyone to be armed near them, anyone to scare them.

I gritted my teeth and fought and wrestled, trying to get him down as he ran toward their rooms, struggling to disable him.

We rocked into each other and the walls, but as I used the mask on his face to gag him, I tried to limit how much noise we made out here.

At last, in the darkness and with the racing tempo of my heart from the exertion of trying to stop him, I shoved him onto his knees. He fought, trying to break away and get free, but I had him with me.

I positioned my hands on his head and didn’t hesitate. I didn’t wait. One twist of my grip and I severed his spine. The crunch of the snap wasn’t overly loud. I felt it more than it reached my ears.

Instead, the gasp that came from the doorway was deafeningly loud in the silence of the night.

Louisa stood there, her hands pressed to her mouth, her eyes opened wide, bugging out with pure fear shining from those light-blue orbs. She staggered back a step, becoming a witness again.

This woman I couldn’t get out of my mind had seen me kill—again.

Dammit!

I lowered my hands, letting the man fall to the carpet.

Despite the few feet between us as she stood in the open doorway to her room, I saw the tremor in her fingers. I heard the wheezy sucks of air as she panted. Eyes wide and locked on me, I knew that all I was doing was reinforcing the concept of how danger surrounded us. I was proving to her that I would do anything to keep her safe. But I was also showing her that violence was a standard variable in my life.

Footsteps sounded behind me, quiet but familiar. I willed Louisa not to scream, staring at her until I had to rip my gaze away and clock that two guards were rushing up the stairs as stealthily as they could.

I eased away from the man I’d killed, letting him drop.

He slumped to the carpet where the guards could handle it.

Watching Louisa clumsily back into her room, I stood and chased after her, determined to erase that image from her mind. The one that projected me as a killer. A monster. As a man she might never be able to allow herself to fully want.

16

LOUISA

Ishook my head, backing up. My feet moved of their own volition, one foot placed further into the supposed safety of my room. One more foot set back from the danger in the hallway.

The peril.

The death.