Page 171 of Lady and the Hitman

But what shattered me—what really broke me—was what came after.

The folders labeled “Lady.” The pictures. The videos. The woman with auburn hair, curled on the floor in a puddle of blood and tears, barely breathing. The way her pain echoed something deep and buried in me. The way the camera didn’t flinch, even when boots—his boots, I was certain—stepped into the frame.

It hadn’t been some stranger’s grief I was witnessing.

It had been my own, reflected back at me.

At the time, I didn’t understand.

I thought she was a victim.

I thought I would be next.

I thought I’d seen the truth.

But now …

Now I wasn’t so sure.

I still didn’t know who she was. Or what had happened to her. I didn’t know why Ronan had kept those files, those images, those pieces of her. I didn’t know why he’d saved them for years—why he’d saved all of them. The other women. The other Ladys. The joy and the intimacy and the heartbreak, all cataloged like chapters in a story I hadn’t been invited to read.

But I was starting to understand something else.

He hadn’t hidden it.

He’d given it to me willingly.

Not with excuses. Not with spin.

He’d let me see exactly who he was—who he had been—and trusted me to decide what that meant.

And maybe that woman on the floor … maybe she wasn’t what I’d feared. Maybe she wasn’t dead. Maybe she hadn’t been left behind. Maybe she’d asked for more than she could handle. Or maybe she’d walked away.

Maybe it wasn’t my job to fill in the blanks with worst-case scenarios.

Because the man who’d made that archive—the man who had carved that past in silence—was also the man who’d flown my father to Cleveland. Who had paid for everything without taking credit.

He hadn’t shown up with flowers.

He’d shown up with action.

With a plan. With execution. With the kind of unwavering commitment that didn’t ask for thanks.

And suddenly, the flash drive didn’t feel like a threat anymore.

It felt like a ledger.

An accounting of lives he’d touched. Women he’d known. Things he couldn’t forget, even if he wanted to.

It wasn’t romantic.

It wasn’t even fully explainable.

But it was honest.

I thought about the way his hand had felt on my thigh in that Hummer. The way his voice had dropped when he first called me Lady. The way he’d sculpted every moment between us with intention, like it was art.

And now, I realized something else: