Page 21 of Bride of Vengeance

"Sit." I point to one of the bar stools beside the kitchen island.

"I can handle this myself."

"I'm sure you can. Sit anyway."

For a moment, I think she's going to refuse. Then something in my expression must convince her that arguing isn't worth the effort. She perches on the edge of the stool like she's ready to run at the first sign of trouble.

Trust me, little wolf. Just for tonight.

I wash my hands with the thoroughness of a surgeon, then gather supplies. Antiseptic, gauze, medical tape, everything needed to clean a wound that should have been tended to thirty minutes ago.

"Jacket off."

She hesitates, and I realize what I'm asking. She's going to have to remove clothing, make herself vulnerable while the man she's been hunting tends to an injury that happened because he brought violence into her life.

The fact that she does it anyway - shrugs out of her leather jacket and rolls up the sleeve of her dark sweater - speaks to either trust or exhaustion. Maybe both.

The cut isn't deep, but it's long and ragged, running from her wrist halfway to her elbow. Glass from the sniper's bullet, probably. She's going to have a scar.

Another mark from tonight. Another reminder of what choosing to save her cost.

I start with antiseptic, cleaning the wound with gentle efficiency. She doesn't flinch, doesn't make a sound, just watches my face with those amber eyes that seem to see everything.

"You're very good at this," she says finally.

"I've had practice."

"On yourself?"

"Usually." I apply gauze with careful pressure, my fingers brushing against her skin. She's warm, soft, completely alive in ways that make my chest tight with something I don't want to examine. "But I've patched up others. When the situation called for it."

"Other criminals."

"Other people who mattered."

She's quiet while I tape the gauze in place, but I can feel the questions building behind her silence. When I'm finished, shedoesn't pull her arm away immediately. Instead, she stares down at my work, at the professional way I've tended to her injury.

"Who are you really?" she asks quietly.

The question I've been dreading.

"You know who I am. You've been hunting me for two years."

"No, I've been hunting a ghost story. A reputation. Someone who kills people and disappears without leaving evidence." She looks up at me, and the intensity in her gaze makes my pulse skip. "Tonight I met a man who risked everything to save my life. A man who lives in a house filled with classical music and original art. A man who patches up wounds like he learned in medical school."

A man who's been watching you for months, learning your patterns, your coffee preferences, the way you chew your lower lip when you're thinking. A man who's already more invested in keeping you alive than he is in staying alive himself.

"Maybe they're the same person."

"Are they?"

I step back, putting space between us that feels like miles. "What do you want me to say, Mariana? That I'm not the killer you think I am? That Ghost is just a bedtime story federal agents tell each other to explain cases they can't solve?"

"I want you to tell me the truth."

The truth.She has no idea what she's asking for.

"The truth is that I've killed twenty-seven people in the last fifteen years. All of them deserved it, all of them were threats to people who couldn't defend themselves, but they're still dead by my hand." I watch her face carefully, looking for the moment she remembers I'm a monster. "The truth is that I've spent those same fifteen years building a reputation that makes dangerous men think twice before targeting reformed families. The truth is that tonight I chose to save you over maintaining that reputation, and I'm not sure either of us is going to survive the consequences."