Page 143 of Lady and the Hitman
But I couldn’t.
Not yet.
There were still more folders. Older ones. The dates stretching back over a decade now. And each one marked with the same name.
Lady.
Lady.
Lady.
I braced myself and opened another. This one was grainier, older tech. The woman wore a red dress and heels, standing on a balcony at night. There was something brittle about her smile, like she was trying too hard. The clip only lasted a few seconds. Just her turning toward the camera. Saying something I couldn’t hear.
Then the screen went black.
It didn’t take much imagination to know what might’ve happened next.
Tears blurred my vision, but I didn’t wipe them away.
I let them fall.
Because this wasn’t jealousy. It wasn’t even heartbreak, not exactly. It was grief. Grief for the woman I’d let myself become—for the fantasy I’d bought into. For the part of me that still, even now, wanted to defend him.
He hadn’t lied to me.
Not really.
But he hadn’t told the truth either.
And maybe that was worse.
I was supposed to be smart. I was a journalist. A skeptic. A woman who prided herself on being able to see through bullshit, to smell a trap before it was sprung.
But I hadn’t seen this.
I’d been so desperate to feel something real, I hadn’t stopped to question what real meant to a man like Ronan.
I curled my arms around myself and rocked once—twice—like I could rock myself out of this nightmare.
What had I done?
What had I let happen?
Was this how it ended for all of them?
A flash drive. A folder. A date.
A name that wasn’t a name.
Lady.
Lady.
Lady.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there.
Eventually, the laptop screen dimmed, the videos gone dark, the silence too loud.
