Page 133 of Lady and the Hitman
His jaw flexed, a shadow crossing his face, but he didn’t look away. “It’s a record,” he said. “Names. Dates. Jobs I took. Problems I made go away for people who could pay for it.”
A chill ran through me. I remembered what he’d said in the bar—threats, leaks, problems that can’t be handled in a boardroom. “Problems,” I echoed, my voice trembling. “You mean people.”
He didn’t flinch. “Sometimes,” he said, his voice steady but laced with something raw. “People who were dangerous. People who hurt others. People who couldn’t be stopped any other way.”
My breath caught, the truth taking shape in my mind without him saying the word—hitman. He wasn’t admitting it outright, but I could feel it, the violence and precision of his past, the shadows he’d lived in. I should’ve pulled away, should’ve run, but his hands on me, his eyes so open and vulnerable, kept me rooted. “Did you choose them?” I asked. “The … problems?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes they were chosen for me. But I never took a job I didn’t believe was necessary. Not once.”
I hesitated—then asked the question that had been clawing at the edges of my mind since that first week, when I still thought Ronan might be a fantasy I could box up and walk away from.
“Before we met,” I said slowly, “there was a story on the news. A man—Charles Redmond. Former chancellor at Southeastern Christian. Shot and killed in what they called a home invasion.”
Ronan didn’t blink. But his body went still.
I kept going. “The official story was vague. No forced entry. No leads. One shot. Nothing else.” My voice dropped. “It didn’t feel like a robbery. It felt like a message.”
He didn’t confirm it. Not with words.
But I saw it in the shift of his shoulders, the flicker behind his eyes. A ghost of recognition.
“You did it,” I said, barely more than a whisper. “Didn’t you?”
A long beat passed. Then: “He was a threat.”
My heart pounded, but I didn’t pull away. “To who?”
“To students. To women. To anyone who didn’t fit into his twisted version of morality.” Ronan’s voice was calm—cold, almost—but I could hear something deeper underneath. Rage. Resolve. “He buried abuse under Scripture. He silenced victims. Ruined lives. And he was about to be elevated to a national policy committee with unchecked power. There were people who tried to stop it through the courts. The media. Nothing worked. Not fast enough.”
I stared at him. “So you were sent in.”
“I accepted the job,” he said, unwavering. “And I made sure he never had the chance to destroy anyone else.”
My breath hitched.
He didn’t look triumphant. Didn’t smirk. He didn’t even flinch when I stepped back slightly, needing air. “I wrote about him,” I said, half to myself. “When he wasstill alive. I tore him apart in op-eds. I thought that was the most I could do. The only power I had.”
“It was,” Ronan said. “For you. For people like you. But there are other ways to hold a man accountable when the system fails.”
“And you’re one of them?”
His eyes didn’t waver. “I was.”
The rooftop felt too quiet, too far above the world we were talking about. But the memory of that news report came roaring back—Redmond’s smiling headshot, the manor house with its wrought-iron gates, the quick flicker of something dark and professional behind the anchor’s eyes as she reported what was clearly not supposed to look like an execution.
It hadn’t been random.
It hadn’t been sloppy.
And now I knew why.
“I should be horrified,” I said softly, fingers trembling at my sides. “I’ve spent my whole career telling people that killing isn’t justice. That due process matters. That no one has the right to decide who lives and dies.”
He nodded once. “I know.”
“But I’m not horrified,” I whispered. “Not like I thought I’d be.”
A pause.
