Page 142 of Lady and the Hitman

Lady. Different date. Different year.

And another face.

This one was older. Early thirties, maybe. Darker hair. A mischievous smirk caught mid-laugh. She looked like she’d been teasing whoever was holding the camera, her bare shoulders glowing in the sun, salt clinging to her skin. There were no videos in this folder. Just photos. All taken over what looked like several months.

They were beautiful. Carefully framed. Tender in a way that made my throat close.

He’d adored her, too.

I didn’t want to know more. I didn’t want to see how this one ended.

But my fingers moved anyway.

Another folder.

Another Lady.

A different kind of woman this time—sharper, sleeker. The sort who wore tailored black and smoked in evening light. Her posture alone said she knew her power. She reminded me of a politician’s mistress. Smart. Dangerous. Irresistible.

This one did have videos. Dozens.

The first was them dancing. Just dancing. In a dark room, to a slow, jazzy track. She was barefoot. He was shirtless. They didn’t speak. Just moved together like they were drunk on each other.

Then another—her lying back on a rooftop, laughing as he fed her bites of something from a silver fork.

Then another?—

But I closed it before it started.

I couldn’t do it.

I was unraveling.

I sat there with my heart pounding, my fingers trembling on the trackpad. My skin felt too tight. My throat was burning. Every folder I clicked was a wound. Another piece of proof that what I thought was ours had been someone else’s first.

And maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe it wasn’t even real. But it looked like love. It felt like intimacy. It mirrored everything Ronan had done for me—every moment I thought was spontaneous or meaningful or mine.

I wasn’t his first Lady.

I was just the latest.

A line item in a long, curated archive.

I’d known that. But to actually see it?—

I squeezed my eyes shut, but the images still played behind my lids—the woman on the floor, the laughter, the blindfolds. All of it tangled together now in one sickening blur of sex and death and beauty and loss.

How many?

How many times had he done this?

How many women had fallen into that velvet-lined trap, thinking they were safe, thinking they were chosen?

How many had he walked away from?

How many hadn’t made it out?

I wanted to shut the laptop. To throw it across the room. To scream until my voice broke.