Christian’s dry response overpowered Kage’s chuckle from behind us. When we reached my
room, I fell into bed more than I climbed into it. I was a lead weight, and gravity was an anchor dragging me toward my mattress. “Good night,” I mumbled. My eyes were already closed, but I felt Christian’s presence in the room like a warm security blanket. “And thank you. For…” I never finished my sentence. The last thing I remembered was a warm hand smoothing my hair out of my face before darkness pulled me under.
*
CHRISTIAN
After Stella fell asleep, I returned to the living room to find Kage examining the note. “Whoever put this in her bag knew how to cover their tracks,” he said. “It’s generic as hell. The paper, the type, the ink…unless he was careless enough to leave fingerprints on it, there’s no way of tracking him down with this alone.” He echoed everything I’d already deduced. If it’d been a digital message, I could’ve hunted the sender down in no time. Physical evidence was much harder to trace. Whoever sent the note was smart, but they’d slip up eventually. Everyone did.
My hand flexed as the memory of Stella’s wide-eyed terror surfaced. Fury crackled through me, its cold burn searing me from the inside out. I’d tamped it down earlier so I could focus on Stella, but now, it came rushing back like a tidal wave. I was going to find the fucker who wrote her that note. And I was going to make them pay. Not with a bullet—that was too good for them.
They deserved something more painful. More prolonged. But until then, I needed to keep Stella safe. “I want you and Brock shadowing her until we find this fucker,” I told Kage. “Don’t let her see you.” After Kage, Brock was one of my best guards, and he’d recently returned from a three-month job in Tokyo. Skepticism crossed Kage’s face. “She’s gonna be okay with that?”
“She won’t find out.” If I asked Stella, she’d say no. She’d already pushed back on moving; I wasn’t giving her another chance to compromise her safety. The only reason I’d acquiesced on the moving issue was because she was traumatized enough without me arguing with her right after her panic attack. Where would she have moved to, anyway? Like she said, the Mirage is the most secure building in the city, a voice in my head taunted. There was an obvious answer, but since she wasn’t moving, the point was moot.
“Fine. You’re the boss.” Kage glanced at the closed door to Stella’s bedroom. “Surprised you’re not staying with her. She’s your girlfriend, and you live right upstairs.” My jaw tightened. I was tempted. So fucking tempted. That was the problem. I didn’t trust myself around Stella. I’d already broken too many rules for her, and staying with her overnight would cross the invisible line I’d drawn for myself. It was always a dance for me, staying close enough to sate the beast inside me and staying far enough so I was never out of control. A constant war between want and preservation. However, I’d come down to…not apologize, necessarily, since I didn’t do apologies…but to set things right between us. When she didn’t answer, I thought she was in the shower, but the longer I waited with no response, the more my mind conjured all sorts of scenarios—of Stella injuring herself, of an intruder who somehow made it past the Mirage’s airtight security and into her house. I’d never felt the sort of panic that’d consumed me when I thought something had happened to her, and that was not fucking okay. She was already a weak spot for me; I couldn’t afford for that spot to grow. “I separate my business and personal
lives. This is business.” I responded to Kage in a clipped tone. My stare burned the air between us. “Touch her for any reason other than to save her life, and you die.” I didn’t care how long Kage and I had been friends. No one touched her except me. His face twisted into a scowl.
“Give me more credit than that.” He hadn’t been happy when I’d pulled him away from the woman he’d brought home, but he showed up as I knew he would. I didn’t trust anyone else to look after Stella tonight, not even myself. “Text me updates every hour. I don’t care if it’s four in the goddamn morning. I want those check-ins.” That was as close to staying with her as I would allow myself. Kage sighed. “You got it.” I cast one last glance at Stella’s bedroom door. Every cell in my body screamed for me not to leave. I despised the idea that Kage was watching her instead of me. When he’d called her darlin’ and she’d smiled at him, I’d come close to losing my best employee at my own hands. In a rare moment of weakness, I’d used our fake dating arrangement to get closer to her, but a part of me had secretly hoped it would shatter the mystery and end my fixation with her. Instead, it was doing the opposite. The more time I spent with Stella, the more I wanted to be around her. To let her into places I’d never shown anyone. It was unacceptable. I brushed past Kage, took the elevator up to my penthouse, and went straight to the bar. The lights of D.C. glittered like a carpet of stars outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, but I couldn’t appreciate the sight. I was too wound up. If anything had happened to Stella… Ice spread through my veins. I filled my glass with a heavier than usual pour. Sat. And waited for the first text from Kage.
12
STELLA
There was something about the morning after that always made the previous night’s events seem surreal. Less than twelve hours ago, I’d been curled up beneath a table in my living room, convinced I was living my last moments on earth. Now, I was drinking my daily wheatgrass smoothie and eating toast in the kitchen like it was a normal day. If it hadn’t been for Kage’s presence, I would’ve thought last night had been a dream. Or rather, a nightmare. “Are you sure you don’t want any food?” A pang of guilt hit my chest when I noticed the purple smudges shadowing his eyes. He must’ve stayed awake all night, and he hadn’t known he would get called to an overnight shift. When was the last time he’d slept? “Yeah, I gotta leave soon, anyway. Christian gave me the all-clear when I told him you were up.” Kage eyed me with a frown. “You gonna be alright?” “Yep. I’ll be fine.” I injected extra pep into my voice. If I acted like everything was okay, it’d be okay. Besides, in the glaring light of day, my panic last night seemed disproportionate to the situation. It was just a note. I lived in a highly secure building, I was surrounded by people when I went out, and Christian was going to run forensic analysis on the letter. He was the best at what he did; he’d find the culprit in no time. I was sure of it. Kage didn’t seem fully convinced by my response, but he didn’t argue. After he left, I went through the motions of my morning routine as best as I could. Forty-five minutes of yoga, followed by fifteen minutes of meditation, journaling, and many hours of agonizing over what to say to Christian, if I
said anything at all. I should thank him for what he did last night, but every time I pulled out my phone, self-doubt paralyzed me. I thought him staying with me and asking Kage to look after me was a big deal, but what if he didn’t? He’d worked in security for years. His clients included billionaires and royalty, for Pete’s sake. What’d happened to me probably wasn’t even a blip on his radar. Plus, he hadn’t reached out all day. No texts or calls, not that I should’ve expected anything else. Obviously, Christian had more important things to do than babysit me. He ran a multimillion-dollar company, and we weren’t even really dating. He’d already gone above and beyond by asking Kage to stay with me overnight. I didn’t want to embarrass myself by making last night a bigger deal than it was, so I kept my mouth shut and busied myself preparing for an influencer event with an up-and-coming fashion designer that afternoon. I’d been tempted to skip the event, but I needed something to take my mind off the note and its implications. You were supposed to wait for me, Stella. You didn’t. A shiver rolled down my spine as I locked my apartment door behind me. I hadn’t drunk coffee in years, but I was so jumpy I might as well have downed five shots of espresso. It’s fine. You’ll be in public. Everything will be just fine.