Chapter 4 : The Collateral Damage
We didn't go to another safehouse. We went to his home.
It was a penthouse overlooking the lake, stripped of warmth. Concrete floors, minimalist furniture, walls of glass. It looked exactly like a place owned by a man who never expected to live long enough to buy art.
Jax had stayed behind at a secure drop-off, muttering about rebuilding her firewalls. Now, it was just me and Killian.
I forced him onto the edge of the master bathroom tub, raiding his medical supplies.
"Take the shirt off," I ordered, snapping on a pair of black latex gloves I found in the kit.
Killian gave a half-smile, though it was tight with pain. "Usually, I buy a girl dinner before she gives me that command."
"You skipped dinner and went straight to a cartel shootout. The romance is dead. Shirt. Now."
He unbuttoned the ruined shirt, letting it drop to the floor. His torso was a map of old violence. Scars—some jagged, some surgical, some unmistakably from blades—crisscrossed his skin. My breath caught, but I forced my hands to remain steady as I cleaned the bullet graze on his shoulder.
"Why do you do this?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. The antiseptic stung him; I felt his muscles twitch under my fingers.
"Do what?"
"Live like this. Manage problems. Bleed for people who don't care about you."
Killian looked straight ahead at the bathroom mirror. "I grew up in the foster system. When I was eighteen, a man named Whitmore—yes, your Whitmore—saw that I had a high IQ and a total lack of attachments. He recruited me into his 'security' division. By the time I realized what they really did, I was too deep."
He turned his head to look at me. "I spent ten years doing terrible things for them, Sloan. Five years ago, I broke away. I became a freelancer. An independent broker. I swore I would never let them use me again."
"And then I hired you to be my date to their gala."
Killian nodded slowly. "When the agency interface flagged your name, my old contacts reached out. They told me Whitmore was planning to 'retire' an asset at the gala. I hacked the file to see who it was. It was you."
I stopped wiping the wound. "You knew before you knocked on my door."
"I knew you were marked for death. I didn't know you." Killian’s eyes darkened, dropping to my lips before rising back to my eyes. "I took the job to get you out. I planned to extract you, drop you with Jax, and disappear. But then you opened the door."
"And?"
"And you were brilliant. And sharp. And completely furious that I wasn't drinking your champagne." He reached up, his large, calloused hand wrapping around my wrist. He pulled my hand away from his shoulder and pressed it flat against his chest, right over his heart. It was beating fast.
"I’ve spent my whole life walking away from things, Sloan," he murmured, his voice rough. "But I don't know how to walk away from you."
I didn't answer with words. I didn't need to.
I leaned down and kissed him.
The kiss wasn't gentle. It was the collision of two people who had almost died three times in the last eight hours. It was desperate, fierce, and tasting of copper and rain. Killian pulled me into his lap, his uninjured arm wrapping around my waist, anchoring me against him. The cold, logical world I had built for thirty-two years shattered completely, replaced by the heat of his skin and the absolute certainty that I belonged exactly here.
We stayed together in the dark penthouse as the storm raged outside.
But as the dawn broke, turning the Chicago skyline gray and bleeding light into the room, reality returned.
Killian was asleep, his breathing even. I slipped out of the bed, pulling on one of his oversized button-down shirts. I walked into the living room and found his secure laptop.
I had crippled the Valesco cartel's accounts last night, but they still had Whitmore. They still had power. As long as the Whitmore Foundation stood, neither Killian nor I would ever be free. We would spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders.
I opened the laptop. I logged back into the financial interface.
May you like
Killian was a weapon of physical force. But I was a weapon of financial destruction.
And it was time to burn the Whitmore Foundation to the ground.
