Page 195 of Their Arrangement
Not loud. Not long. But real. It hurt my ribs. But it loosened something else. Royal’s grin was crooked.
“See? Not a total monster.”
“You kind of are.”
He raised his mug in mock salute.
“Takes one to know one.”
We sat in silence a few seconds longer. Then he stood, stretched, and nodded toward the kitchen.
“There’s toast. And Wolfe left instructions to feed you. Like I’m your temporary bodyguard-slash-butler.”
“And if I refuse?”
He arched a brow.
“I sit on the couch with a gun in my lap until you get hungry.”
I shook my head. But I stood anyway. Not because I wasn’t afraid. But because…
Maybe I wasn’t alone in it anymore.
29
WOLFE
The footage looped again.
Three seconds.
Twelve frames.
One mistake.
The man entered from the blind spot just outside her stairwell. Black hoodie. Mask. Gloves. But he turned. Just enough. A slip in the way his shoulder twisted to push her door open. An angle that gave me what I needed.
Left-handed.
Five foot ten.
Close-cropped beard under the mask.
Military boots.
Clean. Efficient. Fast.
But not fast enough.
I watched it again. This time with the hallway audio unmuted. The audio was grainy. Distorted. Too far from the mic. But I heard it anyway.
The soft click of her boots on the floor. The way she paused near her door—keys in hand. She looked over her shoulder. Isaw it in the angle of her spine. The hesitation. Like something in her gut saidwrong.
She reached for the lock?—
And he was there. Fast. Brutal. A blur of black. She didn’t scream at first. She choked. Like the sound got caught behind fear and instinct.
Then—
