Page 169 of Lady and the Hitman
“It’s triage,” Ronan said, still measuring my mother’s breathing, not Trevor’s offense. “The kind that keeps a man alive when the clock says he shouldn’t be.”
Trevor’s mouth opened, closed. He looked at me for backup and found none.
My mother swayed. I moved to her; Ronan beat me there by half a second, his hand steadying her elbow with a gentleness that felt like a secret he didn’t show people often.
She blinked up at him, tears streaming now. “Why would you do this?”
“Because Zara asked for something once,” he said quietly, eyes flicking to mine, “and I listened.”
Heat broke open in my chest, sharp and humbling. This wasn’t what I’d asked for—not on paper, not the night I’d written to a rumor and described the shape of my ruin—but it was the same language, spoken in a different room. Obedience, delivered not as power play but as promise. I didn’t know what to do with that. I didn’t know how to hold the gratitude without cutting my hands on it.
“Ronan,” I said, and his name was a tremor.
He met my eyes. There was nothing performative there. No triumph. No request. Just the steadiness I’d come to recognize in him—the same calm that had felt terrifying on a flash drive and life-saving in a hospital.
“What do you need from us?” I asked, because I needed to give something shape.
“Pack a bag,” he said simply. “Clothes, chargers, whatever will make the hours bearable. Twenty minutes from now a transport nurse will brief you on what to expect for the transfer. Don’t sign anything without me reading it first.” He glanced at the folder of insurance papers like they offended him on a molecular level. “Those are irrelevant for the next forty-eight hours. After that, they’re still irrelevant.”
My mother let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “We don’t know how to repay?—”
“You won’t,” he said, and somehow it didn’t land like possession. It landed like mercy. “You’ll sit with your husband. You’ll let the doctors do their work. You’ll sleep. Eat. Breathe. That’s your part.”
Trevor stood, hands useless at his sides. He looked like a man who’d brought a megaphone to a house fire and just watched someone else produce water. “I—” He swallowed. “Can I … still set up the fundraiser? For … after?”
Ronan finally turned to him, expression unreadable. “If it helps you,” he said, not unkind. “Do it.”
Trevor flushed again, this time with something softer. “Right. Yes. Okay.”
Ronan shifted his attention back to me. “I’ll walk you through the rest. There will be a transport consent for the air ambulance. A surgical consent on arrival. I’ve asked them to hold all signatures for you or your mother, whichever of you is more clear-headed when you land.” His eyes held mine for a beat that counted. “Don’t let anyone rush you. They’ll be efficient. They won’t be careless.”
I nodded, tears finally unclenching from wherever they’d been hiding. “Okay.”
He met my eyes with steady certainty. “You have my number,” he said. “Use it.”
I nodded, fingers twitching at my side. Not because I needed to dial it—but because I suddenly wanted to. Because there was something grounding in the reminder, something that saidI’m here, andI’m not leaving you to do this alone.
Not sexual—not this time. Just a different kind of current. The quiet voltage of being rescued by the very thing you were taught never to trust.
“Ronan,” my mother said again, voice steadying around his name, like it had become a handhold. “Thank you.”
He inclined his head once. “You’re welcome.”
He moved toward the door, then paused, putting his palm on the frame the way he had when he first entered—light touch, total command.
“Arrangements are made,” he said, and that was it. No flourish. No receipt.
He left to set the next set of dominoes falling, and theroom exhaled around him like it had been holding its breath since he arrived.
Outrage had heat; leverage had an engine. I had spent my life learning how to wield one because it was safer, and in one night, the other saved my father’s life.
“Z?” Trevor said tentatively.
“Set up your fundraiser,” I told him, not unkind, not anything but tired and grateful and terrified. “Write your piece. Tell the truth.”
He nodded, subdued. “I will.”
My mother pressed her forehead to my father’s temple and shut her eyes. “We’re going to Cleveland, Greg,” she whispered, voice trembling like a wire. “You’re going to let them fix your beautiful stubborn heart, do you hear me?”
