Page 150 of Lady and the Hitman
Because it didn’t feel like a dream.
It felt like a warning.
It started the same way the video had. Static. Cold tile. My body—curled, broken, too still. It wasn’t the woman I’d seen.
It was me.
I knew it in the way my ribs ached. In the tightness of my jaw. In the blood pooling beside me, warm and thick and real.
I was crying. Not sobbing. Not even moving.
Just breathing.
Barely.
My fingers twitched like they wanted to claw the floor. Like they knew I was supposed to get up. Fight. Run.
But my body didn’t listen.
I just lay there. Waiting.
And then I heard it—the quiet shift of boots on tile.
Ronan.
I couldn’t see his face. Just the black laces. The shadow of his legs.
He didn’t speak.
Didn’t kneel.
Didn’t touch me.
Just stood there. Watching.
Judging.
Ending me.
I tried to scream, but my mouth wouldn’t open.
Worse than the fear was the betrayal. I hadn’t even wanted him in the beginning—not really. I’d been curious, maybe. Reckless, definitely. But I’d never intended to fall this hard, this fast. Ronan had pulled me in with careful hands and quiet power, with the way he saw me, listened to me, held me like I was made of something worth protecting. And damn him—he had made me believe it. Believe in him. In us.
He’d opened a door to something I didn’t even know I wanted—something that felt like devotion, like permanence. And I had walked through it willingly. Trusting him. Trusting the fantasy he’d spun with every look, every touch, every low-spoken promise. He had given me tenderness and worship and control disguised as care, and I had mistaken it for love.
I had thought I was safe with him.
But now I knew better.
Now I’d seen the truth. The archive of women. The blood. The violence. He was too dangerous. Too practiced. Too precise in the way he gave and took. And no matter what I felt for him, no matter how much I ached to believe I was different, I couldn’t ignore what he’d done.
What he’d hidden.
And how easily I could become just another ending.
Another Lady.
I couldn’t unsee it.
