Page 139 of Lady and the Hitman
His jaw clenched, but he didn’t respond. And in that silence, something final settled between us. An understanding.
I backed into the house and shut the door in his face. Locked it. And stepped away with shaking hands.
The line I’d drawn in the sand had just become a battlefield.
And I had to decide—fast—how far I was willing to go.
And who I was willing to become to survive it.
27
The door clicked shut behind Trevor, and the quiet that followed was deafening.
I stood there for a moment—just stood—watching the empty space where he’d been, like I could still feel the tension he left behind. I hadn’t asked him to come. Hadn’t wanted his warnings or his judgment. But now that he was gone, his words clung to me like smoke.
I turned toward the table.
The flash drive sat there like a loaded weapon. Small. Innocent. Humming with the kind of power that could undo everything.
I picked it up slowly, my fingers suddenly cold.
For a second, I almost didn’t plug it in. I hovered there, the drive in one hand, my laptop open and waiting, the air thick with hesitation. I could pretend I didn’t need to know. I could pretend I was the kind of woman who trusted what she felt more than what she feared.
But I wasn’t.
I needed to know who Ronan really was. Not just theman who drew me a bath. Who carried me in his arms. Who held my gaze like it was the only thing tethering him to Earth. I needed to know everything.
So, I plugged it in.
It opened with a quiet blink—just a simple folder directory. But what hid inside was anything but simple.
The first files I clicked weren’t labeled. Just timestamped video clips. I opened one.
Grainy surveillance footage filled the screen. A man—Ronan—approached a figure at a crowded street corner. There was a flash of something metallic. A struggle that didn’t last more than a second. The figure crumpled. Ronan didn’t even break stride.
Another file. A rooftop. A long-range rifle. A man in a suit getting out of a black car. Ronan’s breath audible in the mic feed—calm. Steady. One shot. Clean. The target dropped. Chaos erupted below, but Ronan was already gone.
More clips. More bodies. Some quick, efficient. Others more … intimate. A man tied to a chair, trembling. Ronan leaning in. A quiet exchange. A final breath.
Each video was a page in a book I didn’t know he’d written. A life I hadn’t asked to be part of.
He was a killer.
Not metaphorically. Not hypothetically.
A real, trained, deliberate killer.
And I’d begged to be ruined by him.
And then?—
More.
The folders were plain. A set of numerical dates, each paired with a single name: Lady. Lady. Lady.
What the fuck?
They stretched back years.
