Chapter 5

I didn't knock.

The security guard at Rhett's gate started his practiced speech about appointments, but I cut him off by shoving my phone screen in his face. The surveillance photo stared back at us—me, standing at Rhett's front door, timestamp and all.

"Tell your boss someone is sending me surveillance photos," I said.

Five minutes later, I was being escorted through corridors I hadn't seen before, deeper into the house where the warm wood and soft lighting gave way to something harder. More businesslike. The man leading me—not the same one from yesterday—moved with the kind of quiet efficiency that suggested violence was always an option.

Rhett's office hit me like a slap of cold air. Everything about it screamed control—the massive dark wood desk, three monitors displaying what looked like security feeds, an abstract painting on the wall that probably cost more than my car. This wasn't the relaxed man who'd let me tattoo him. This was someone else entirely.

He looked up when I entered, and for a split second, I saw something flicker across his face. Relief, maybe. Or surprise that I'd actually come.

"Show me," he said without preamble.

I handed him my phone. He read the message, his expression never changing, but I watched his knuckles go white around the device.

"Salazar," he said, like he was confirming a chess move he'd already anticipated.

The name hung in the air between us, heavy with implications I didn't understand. "Who is Salazar?"

"Someone who thinks you're leverage now." He set my phone on the desk with deliberate care. "Someone who's about to learn they're wrong."

The casual way he said it—like he was discussing the weather—made my stomach clench. "What does that mean?"

Rhett stood and moved to the window, his hands clasped behind his back. For a moment, he looked older, weighted down by something I couldn't see.

"The Caraveo family and the Salazar family have been fighting over territory for three generations," he said. "You were seen at my house. Now they think you matter to me."

"Do I?" The question slipped out before I could stop it.

He turned, and the look he gave me was so intense it felt like being x-rayed. "That's the problem. You do."

My heart hammered against my ribs. "I should never have come here."

"I should never have let you come here." His voice carried something that might have been regret. "But here we are."

The word 'let' hit me wrong, scraping against every independent instinct I had. "You didn't LET me do anything. I drove myself here. Both times."

Something shifted in his expression—approval, maybe, or recognition. "You did. And now someone wants to hurt you because of me."

He moved back to the desk, leaning against it with his arms crossed. The position should have looked casual, but there was nothing relaxed about the way he watched me.

"So now you have two choices," he said. "Walk away and hope they lose interest, or let me handle it. But if I handle it, you stay where I can see you."

"What does that mean?"

"My penthouse downtown. Just until this blows over." His voice was matter-of-fact, like he was discussing a business arrangement. "I'll set up a tattoo space for you there. You keep working. You keep your independence. But you stay where my people can protect you."

I stared at him. "You want me to move in with you."

"I want you alive."

The blunt honesty of it hit me like a physical blow. "And what's the catch?"

"The catch is me."

The admission hung between us, loaded with promise and threat in equal measure. I could feel the weight of the decision pressing down on me, the way my life was balanced on the edge of this moment.

"No," I said.

I turned toward the door, needing space to think, needing air that didn't smell like cedar and danger. But before I could reach the handle, his hand slammed against the wood above my head, the sound echoing through the room like a gunshot.

I spun around, my back pressed against the door, and found him inches away. His other hand came up to brace against the wood beside my head, caging me in without touching me. The heat radiating from his body made the air between us feel electric.

"I am not asking because I think you're weak," he said, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "I'm asking because the last person the Salazars used to send a message... they sent her back in pieces."

My breath caught in my throat. The words hit me like ice water, washing away the heat of anger and leaving something colder behind. Fear, yes, but also a terrible understanding of what world I'd stumbled into.

His hand moved from the door to hover beside my face—not touching, but close enough that I could feel the warmth of his palm. The gesture was gentle despite the violence in his words, and somehow that made it more devastating.

"Say yes," he whispered.

"To what?" My voice came out breathier than I'd intended.

"To everything."

I looked up into his eyes—gray like storm clouds, like the sky before lightning strikes—and felt the ground shift beneath my feet. If I said yes, my carefully controlled life would spiral completely off its axis. If I said yes, there would be no going back to the woman I'd been a week ago.

If I said yes—

His phone rang.

The sound cut through the tension like a blade. Rhett's jaw tightened, but he didn't move away from me as he answered.

"What."

I watched his face change as he listened, watched the man who'd been inches from kissing me transform into something cold and deadly. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.

"Where," he said. Just one word, but it carried the weight of an avalanche.

He hung up and looked at me, and I saw something in his expression that made my blood turn to ice.

"Your ex-boyfriend just walked into a Salazar bar and started asking questions about me," he said. "He's trying to be a hero. He's going to get himself killed."