The hallway was sideways. That was the first thing I noticed. The second thing was that the floor was cold against my cheek and the third was that something warm was running into my left eye and making it hard to blink.
I heard footsteps. Fast. Then a sound I couldn't quite place, something heavy and violent and short, and then the man who'd been standing over me wasn't standing over me anymore.
Cillian's face appeared above me. His hands were on my cheeks, tilting my head, his thumb swiping blood away from my eye. His voice was rough around the edges, like he'd forgotten how to control the way words came out of his mouth.
"Ava. Ava, look at me."
"I told him to walk away," I mumbled. My tongue felt thick. "No one ever listens."
His eyes were scanning my face, my head, the blood in my hair. His jaw was locked so tight I could see the vein in his temple pulsing.
"And you know what the worst part is?" I said, my words slurring together slightly. "I told him my husband was basically a mafia prince. Twice. In my life. Two different men. Neither one believed me. I'm starting to think I'm not threatening enough."
He didn't laugh. He looked like laughter was something that had been permanently removed from his operating system.
"Can you stand?" he asked.
"Probably. Maybe. Give me a minute."
He didn't give me a minute. He picked me up, one arm under my knees, the other around my back, and I was off the floor before I could protest. My head swam and I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pressed my face into his neck because the hallway was spinning.
He smelled like cologne and wine and fury.
"I can walk," I said into his collar.
He didn't respond to that. Nik was somewhere behind us, I could hear his voice giving instructions to someone. Cillian carried me through a back door and into the night air and then into the car and at no point did he loosen his grip or look at me like I was anything other than the only thing in the world that mattered.
In the car I ended up in his lap again. His hand held something against my temple, his jacket folded into a compress. The leather was going to be ruined. I thought about telling him that and then decided he probably didn't care about the jacket right now based on the way his other arm was wrapped around me so tight I could feel his heartbeat against my shoulder.
It was fast. Faster than mine. That felt important somehow but my brain was too foggy to figure out why.
The car stopped in front of a building I didn't recognize. Somewhere with a doorman and marble floors and the kind of elevator that moved so quietly you couldn't tell if it was going up or down. The apartment it opened into was large and clean and furnished in that minimal expensive way that said someone with money lived here but didn't spend much time doing it. I had questions about this apartment. Many questions. I decided they could wait until my head stopped pounding.
Cillian set me on a bed that was bigger than my entire room at Lana's place. A man arrived within minutes, grey-haired, calm, carrying a medical bag. A doctor. He checked my eyes with a light, felt the wound on my temple, asked me to follow his finger. Mild concussion, he said. The cut wasn't deep enough for stitches but it needed to be cleaned and dressed. He did his work quickly and quietly while Cillian stood by the window with his arms crossed, watching every move the man's hands made on my skin like he was cataloguing them.
The doctor left. Cillian took his place.
He sat on the edge of the bed and opened the first aid kit the doctor had left behind. He peeled back the temporary dressing, cleaned the cut again himself with a gentleness that didn't match anything else about him, and applied a fresh bandage. His fingers were steady. The rest of him wasn't. I could see it in the set of his shoulders and the way his breathing was too controlled, like he was managing it manually.
I watched his face while he worked. This close, in the low light of the bedroom, he looked tired in a way that went deeper than one night.
I reached up and touched his jaw. He went completely still.
"I'm okay," I said.
He didn't move. My fingers rested against the rough stubble along his jawline and I felt the muscle there tighten under my touch.
"If I had been ten seconds later," he said quietly. His voice was stripped down to something I barely recognized. "Ten seconds, Ava."
"But you weren't."
"But I could have been." He looked at me and I saw it. The thing underneath all the control and the authority and the possessiveness. He was terrified. This man who made people go pale with whispered sentences and moved through the world like he owned it was sitting on the edge of a bed looking at me like the thought of losing me had cracked something open that he didn't know how to close.
"You weren't," I said again, softer. "You were right on time. You're always right on time. It's actually very annoying."
Something shifted in his face. The ghost of a breath that might have been a laugh in another life.
He took my hand from his jaw, held it, and pressed his lips to my forehead, right next to the bandage. He stayed there for a long moment. I closed my eyes and let him.
I fell asleep with his hand holding mine and the last thing I registered was the sound of him pulling a chair to the side of the bed, settling into it, and not leaving.
I woke up to sunlight and the smell of coffee.
The apartment looked different in the morning. The windows were floor to ceiling and the city stretched out below in a way that reminded me how far I was from the life I'd built. Cillian was asleep in the chair beside the bed. His head was tilted back, his hand still resting near mine on the mattress, and he was still in last night's clothes. He looked younger when he slept.
I sat up slowly. My head throbbed but the dizziness was gone. The bandage was still in place. I touched it gently and winced.
"Good, you're alive," Nik said from the doorway. He was holding two mugs of coffee and wearing the same clothes from last night, which meant he'd been here the whole time too. "I was starting to worry I'd have to plan a funeral. His, not yours. He's been insufferable."
"I can hear you," Cillian said without opening his eyes.
"Good. You need to hear this. You look terrible. Go shower. I'll watch your wife." Nik crossed the room and handed me a mug. "How's the head, Mrs. Volkov?"
"Still attached."
"That's the spirit." He dropped into the other chair and stretched his legs out. "You know, most people's first dinner with me goes better than this. I'm usually very good company. I'm going to need a do-over."
"I'd like that," I said, and meant it.
Cillian opened his eyes. He looked at me first, scanning my face, the bandage, checking. Then he looked at Nik.
"She's fine," Nik told him. "Go shower. You smell like a restaurant floor."
Cillian stood slowly, his body stiff from the chair. He looked at me one more time, something passing between us that I couldn't name but could feel in my chest. Then he disappeared into the bathroom and a moment later I heard the water start.
"He sat there all night," Nik said, quieter now. "I tried to take over at four and he looked at me like I'd suggested selling his firstborn."
I wrapped both hands around the mug and didn't say anything because my throat was tight and the coffee was warm and I was thinking about a man who sat in a chair all night holding my hand while I slept.
The buzzer by the front door went off.
Nik frowned and stood, crossing to the intercom. He listened for a second, and pressed the button without saying anything to me.
"Who is it?" I asked.
"Friendly, apparently."
The elevator doors opened and Lana came through first, Elena right behind her, both of them breathless and pink-cheeked like they'd been rushing.
"Evie!" Elena called out, already scanning the apartment with wide eyes. "We got a message saying you wanted us to—"
She stopped. Her gaze had landed on my face. On the bandage at my temple.
Lana's hand went to her mouth.
"What happened to you?" she whispered.
I stared at them. They stared at me. And the only thought in my head, louder than the headache and the confusion and the questions I didn't have answers to, was: how did they find this top-secret mafia safehouse?