Page 69 of Infamous

Just one word. It’s all I give her, all she needs.

She studies me for a long moment, like she’s trying to measure the truth in the stillness of my body. My hands rest on my knees, fingers steady, posture straight. But my heart - what’s left of it - is anything but.

That one word tells her everything she doesn’t want to know.

That Michael is gone.

That I made sure of it.

Her lips part like she wants to say something, but nothing comes out. The air in the room feels heavy, thick enough to choke on. She glances at my hands, at the faint pink line across my knuckles, the single trace of the night that soap couldn’t erase.

She knows.

She just doesn’t want to admit it out loud.

Her shoulders tremble with the weight of what she’s feeling - relief, confusion, guilt, something else tangled between them. I can see it all play across her face. The part of her that wants to thank me. The part that’s terrified of what I’ve done. And the part that can’t decide which of those scares her more.

I don’t move. I just sit there, watching her watch me.

“I don’t understand you,” she says finally, voice breaking on the last word.

I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “You don’t have to.”

“But I should. You keep showing up right when I need you. You knew about Michael. You knew he’d be here.” She shakes her head, her breath quickening. “You said you saw him following me - but that doesn’t make sense. You couldn’t have known. How did you - ”

“Nadia.”

Her name tastes like a prayer on my tongue. It still hurts to say.

She stops. Her eyes meet mine, wide and bright.

“I told you,” I say quietly. “I see things most people miss.”

Her throat works as she swallows, slow and uncertain. Then she whispers, “And what do you see now?”

I let the question hang. Let her feel the weight of the silence pressing in from all sides.

“I see someone who’s finally free,” I answer.

Her breath hitches.

For a moment, neither of us looks away. There’s something magnetic, dangerous, inevitable in the space between us - like we’re standing at the edge of something neither of us can walk back from.

She should be afraid. She should throw me out. Call the cops. Scream. Anything.

Instead, she leans back into her chair, eyes locked on me. And I know I’ve lost the battle to stay away from her.

People thinkthey know what happens when a man like me walks out of a cage.

They’ve seen the movies, read the headlines. They think the first thing I do is go looking for a woman - any woman - just to remind myself what it feels like to be inside something warm and alive after years of cold steel and silence.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

I’m the king of self-control. The reluctant priest of celibacy. Eleven years without a woman, and the only one I’ve ever wanted is sitting a few feet away, wearing a T-shirt soft enough to tempt the devil himself.

Nadia.

My first. My last. My always.