Chapter 5

Liam:

The first bullet shattered the wine glass.

The second tore through the window behind me.

I didn't have time to process the rest.

One second I was sitting across from her,silent, masked, unreadable,and the next, I was on the floor with her body shielding mine, her breath sharp against my cheek, gun in hand.

She moved like a ghost. No wasted motion. No hesitation. Just instinct and precision.

People screamed around us. Glass rained down like glittering shrapnel. I barely caught a glimpse of the bikes roaring past the terrace, the flashes of gunmetal and the black helmets before she was gone.

"Stay down," she said,her voice the first I'd heard from her. Low. Firm. Familiar.

Then she ran.

I scrambled up, heart pounding, ears ringing, but she was already disappearing around the corner, braid whipping behind her like a war banner.

Julian dove beside me, yelling into his comms. "Get the car! Lock down the building! Where the hell is she..."

"She went after them," I muttered, barely able to believe it myself.

I stood up despite the protests of my security team. My suit was torn. My forearm was bleeding from a glass shard. But none of that mattered.

Because she had gone after them.

Alone.

I moved toward the door, but Julian grabbed my shoulder. "Sir, we need to extract you. Now."

I shook him off. "She saved my life."

Julian's eyes were wild. "And now she might lose hers."

I didn't say what I was thinking,that she wasn't just a bodyguard. That something in her voice, her presence, the way she moved,I knew her. Or maybe… part of me had never stopped knowing.

Through the broken window, I could see a blur in the distance,her figure racing after the last bike, leaping over a low barrier and vanishing into the streets beyond.

She wasn't running from danger.

She was running straight into it.

And I stood there, useless, staring after the girl in the mask who had just taken a bullet for me.

Not because she had to.

But because, somehow, I still mattered to her.

Even if I didn't deserve to.

It was nearly twenty minutes before she came back.

The restaurant was in chaos,glass crunched underfoot, sirens wailed in the distance, and security buzzed around me like hornets. But the second she stepped through the side entrance, the world went quiet.

Blood splattered her jacket. Her braid was unraveling, a strand of hair stuck to her cheek with sweat. One of her gloves was missing. In her bare hand, she held a silver chain,torn from the neck of the man she'd caught. Proof.

Her mask was still on, but her shoulders rose and fell with sharp, clipped breaths. She didn't speak. Just walked straight toward me like she hadn't just sprinted through hell and back.

And something in me… cracked.

I stepped forward without thinking, closing the space between us. My hands went to her arms, checking, searching.

"Are you hurt?" I asked, voice rougher than I expected. "Lauren, are you…."

She flinched. Just a fraction. But then she stepped back.

Not dramatically. Not harshly.

Just far enough to let me know she didn't want my hands on her.

The space between us filled with silence and shame. Mine.

Her eyes,only those were visible through the mask,met mine for half a second. They weren't angry. Just unreadable. Cold. She held out the chain and dropped it into my hand like it weighed nothing.

Then she turned her back and walked away toward the SUV without a word.

I stood there, fingers curling around the metal, my heart hammering.

Who the hell was she?

And why did it feel like losing her, even for those twenty minutes, had carved something open in me I couldn't close?

Julian came up behind me, saying something about emergency protocol, but I couldn't focus on anything except her silhouette.

Even from behind, even beneath that mask,she felt like a ghost I used to know.

Like a memory I'd buried too deep.

And now that she was back, I wasn't sure I was ready to remember.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The ride back was quiet.

Too quiet.

The kind of silence that wasn't peaceful,but heavy. Dense. Like the air between us was filled with all the words I didn't know how to say.

She sat beside me in the passenger seat, eyes fixed on the road ahead. One hand rested on her thigh, the other loosely curled near the door. Tense. Ready. As if another ambush could happen at any moment. As if she was still in that moment,gunfire in her ears, blood on her boots.

But all I could do was watch her.

Not obviously. Just… out of the corner of my eye.

The way her fingers tapped out an unconscious rhythm on her leg. The bloodstain on her jacket sleeve, now dark and dry. The tear at the knee of her black tactical pants. The scrape on her knuckle.

None of it seemed to faze her.

But it wrecked me.

She'd thrown herself in front of bullets for me. Chased down assassins without backup. Returned without complaint. And when I tried to reach for her,just to check if she was okay,she'd stepped away like my touch burned.

And yet… she still protected me.

Why?

Julian was on the phone in the backseat, relaying everything to my security director, but his voice was muffled beneath the storm in my head.

Because this wasn't normal.

This wasn't just professionalism. It wasn't just duty.

She knew me.

I was sure of it now.

There was something in the way she looked at me,those split seconds when she thought I wasn't watching. Like she was bracing herself against something personal. Like every breath she took around me cost her something.

I stared out the window as the estate gates rolled open, security flooding the driveway like ants. But even with all the guards, the cameras, the reinforced walls, I felt more exposed than I had in years.

Because I wasn't used to feeling… watched like that.

Not by her.

Not by someone who looked at me like I was both the reason she stood tall ,and the reason she broke.

And maybe I was.

God help me, maybe I was.

The car rolled to a stop in front of the house. She was already opening the door before the driver could.

"Wait," I said, voice low.

She froze for a heartbeat. Not turning. Not speaking.

Just waiting.

Like she didn't want to give me even that.

"I don't know who you are," I said, "but I think I used to."

A pause.

Then she stepped out and disappeared into the estate without a word,leaving me with a silver chain in my hand and a truth I was just beginning to feel:

Whoever she was… she'd come back for a reason