Page 63 of Black Heart

“That unknown figure?” Kaden’s voice drops to a near husk of itself. “It was Morelli. After a decade of chasing phantoms, there he was. On your company’s servers.”

Blood drains from my face as I jerk my chin up and stare at him. “But you said Morelli never shows his face. Why would he—how? In Greycliff?”

“I wondered the same myself. It didn’t occur to me that the man in the footage could be the Ghost Leader. Until we got our answer today.”

My mind goes quiet at his meaning. Too quiet. “Morelli’s dying, so he’s personally making sure his enterprise lives on. He’s preparing for a power transition and wants to ensure his successor is ready for the role. That’s why he’s showing his face. Because it doesn’t matter anymore.”

The cottage’s lights burst on. I squint, adjusting to thesudden glare, but notice how the shadows seem to shrink away from Kaden, leaving nothing but the solid form of a man who’s walked through hell and emerged bearing its scars.

Kaden rakes his fingers through his hair and releases a sound halfway between a sigh and a lament. “The AI tech is a trigger to guarantee his monopoly. He’s using your company as a shield until his successor finishes what he started. You’re a witness who could dismantle all of that. No wonder he wants you so badly.”

My stomach flutters as Kaden crosses the room, each step measured. He’s a man of precision, every movement deadly. It’s both terrifying and mesmerizing when he holds my stare. “I’m not going to let that happen. Not again.”

“But I’m still bait,” I say.

Kaden’s scar seems to shift to a stark white. Every inch of his frame radiates with menace. “I’m not a hero, Layla.”

“I can see that. And I’m certainly not your princess.”

I’m not sure whether it’s the adrenaline or the insanity of my situation giving me this newfound courage, but I welcome it.

“Your hatred for Morelli is palpable,” I add. “But what about after? When you’ve had your revenge? What then?”

Kaden’s focus doesn’t waver from my face. “He took my daughter away from me when she was barely twelve. She was innocent, Layla. Just like you.”

The vivid picture of a twelve-year-old girl on the cusp of becoming, her future mutilated before being snuffed out, punctures any defenses I had left, acid-sharp. Kaden isn’t just a steel-edged assassin, he’s a man hollowed out and carved to the bone with loss. I’m drowning along with him in the depths of his anguish, at a love so violently severed, because the image of a younger Kaden cradling a baby swathed in soft blankets brings me to tears.

“Tell me about her. Tell me about the day she was born.”

Tell me how you love,I add silently.Instead of just hate.

Kaden softens for the barest of seconds. “The day Cassie was born, it was chaos. I was deployed overseas and had to catch three different flights to make it back in time.”

He pauses, two fingers brushing his lips as if to suppress a smile. “I burst into the hospital room, still in my fatigues, covered in dust from God-knows-where. And there she was. Tiny. Perfect.”

Kaden’s voice grows quieter. “Cassie’s mother, Angie, we weren’t together. It was complicated. She was a journalist, always chasing the next big story. When she found out she was pregnant, she told me she wasn’t cut out for motherhood, but she’d carry the baby to term if I wanted to raise her.”

Kaden’s jaw shifts slightly. “Angie signed over full custody the day after Cassie was born. Last I heard, she was covering conflicts in some war-torn country. But Cassie, from the moment I held her, I knew. She was my whole world.”

Then he sighs, the past pulling him under. “I’d give anything to hold her again.”

His confession hangs in the air, a fragile thread connecting two broken souls.

And then I close the distance, sealing his pain with a kiss. His lips are soft, hesitant at first, as if he’s afraid I’ll shatter beneath his touch. But as I wind my arms around his neck, pulling him closer, he responds with a fervor that turns my exhales into his inhales.

Kaden’s hands find my waist, fingers digging into my flesh as he deepens the kiss. It’s a clash of teeth and tongue, a desperate need to feel something, anything, beyond what he’s buried in.

When we finally break apart, both of us panting, I notice a forgotten piece of his past anchored in his gaze.

Hope, perhaps. Or the beginnings of reliance.

I tilt my chin, keeping the Kaden-that-was close to my heart. “I’ll be your bait. I’ll help lure Morelli to you.”

Kaden stills. “You’re sure?”

I nod, no longer weighed down by terror.

Because looking at the man before me—the killer, the protector, the stolen father—I realize that I would wade through rivers of blood, stain my soul beyond recognition. In Kaden, I see a love so fierce that a little girl and her crayon scribbles rewrote his entire existence, and for the first time, I’m ready to color myself into someone else’s world, even if it’s painted in shades of black.

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