chapter 4: A name He knows

Scarlett hung up the phone and stood in the middle of her living room, repeating the name in her head until it stopped sounding like a stranger's and started sounding like a threat.

Malachi Voss.

She crossed to the window. Draven was still on the sidewalk exactly where she'd left him, hands in his pockets, watching the street like he expected it to attack. She should have felt ridiculous, opening her window three stories up to yell down at a man she'd met twenty four hours ago. Instead she felt reckless in a way that was almost satisfying.

"Malachi Voss," she called down. "Does that name mean anything to you.

He went still.

Not the ordinary stillness of a man thinking. Something deeper, a full-body freeze that lasted half a second too long before he looked up at her window, and even from three stories away she could see something had changed in his face.

"Come down," he said. "Or let me up. I'm not having this conversation shouted across a parking lot."

She let him up.

It was, she would think later, the first real decision she made about him. Not fate, not chemistry, not the strange electric pull that hummed under her skin whenever he was close. A choice. She needed answers and he clearly had them, and she was done being the only person in this story who didn't understand what was happening to her own life.

He filled her doorway the way he filled every room, too large for the space, too still for how much energy seemed to radiate off him. He didn't sit when she gestured at the couch. He stood near the door instead, like some part of him needed to keep it between her and whatever was still out there.

"How do you know that name," she said. Not a question. A demand.

"Where did you hear it?"

"The bank. They said the hold on my account came from a dispute filed on his behalf." She crossed her arms, refusing to let the fear in her chest bleed into her voice. "Your turn."

Draven exhaled slowly, like a man setting down a weight he'd been carrying too long to remember not carrying it. "Malachi is dangerous. More dangerous than the man in the car. More dangerous than your husband's debt. If his name is attached to your accounts, it means he already knows who you are."

"Why would some loan enforcer know who I am?"

"He's not an enforcer." Draven's jaw tightened. "He's someone I've been trying to stay ahead of for years. And if he's involved in this, it isn't about Ethan's money anymore."

"Then what is it about?"

He looked at her for a long moment, and she watched him do the thing he always did, weigh the truth against how much it would cost him to say it.

"You," he said finally. "It's about you."

Her phone buzzed against her palm before she could ask what that meant. Nora.

Please tell me the six foot four disaster is not currently in your apartment.

Scarlett almost laughed despite everything. She typed back one handed. He's in my apartment.

I'm coming over.

Nora, no.

Nora, yes. I brought wine last time you had an emotional collapse and I am not missing whatever collapse is happening right now. Also if he murders you I want to be a witness, not a headline.

Scarlett looked up to find Draven watching her with something that might have been the first genuine amusement she'd seen on his face.

"Your friend," he said. It wasn't a question.

"She's coming over. Fair warning, she's already decided you're either my soulmate or a serial killer and she hasn't picked a lane yet."

"Smart woman."

"She'll ask you a hundred questions and she won't apologize for a single one of them."

"Good." A smile touched his mouth. "I'd rather answer to someone who isn't afraid to ask."

It was such a small thing, an offhand comment about her best friend, but it loosened something in Scarlett's chest anyway. He wasn't performing charm at her. He looked, for one unguarded second, like a man who genuinely didn't mind being questioned, and that surprised her more than anything else he'd said tonight.

"Tell me about Malachi," she said. "Everything. Before Nora gets here and turns this into an interrogation with snacks."

"I can't tell you everything."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it's true." He crossed the room, close enough that she had to tip her head back, close enough that the pull in her chest sharpened into something warm and insistent. "But I can tell you this. Whatever he wants from you, I will not let him have it. And I need you to trust that, even before you understand why."

"I don't trust easily anymore."

"I know." His voice dropped, rough at the edges. "I'm not asking you to trust me blindly. I'm asking you to let me stay close enough to prove it."

Someone knocked on the door before she could answer, three sharp raps that made her jump.

"That's fast even for Nora," Scarlett muttered, moving toward it.

Draven's hand caught her wrist before she reached the handle, gentle but immovable.

"Wait." His eyes had gone sharp, focused on the door like it had personally offended him. "That's not Nora's knock."

"How would you even know that?"

He didn't answer. He simply moved her behind him with the same practiced ease from the sidewalk, positioning his body between her and whatever waited on the other side, and for the first time Scarlett noticed something strange flicker in his eyes when the hallway light caught them. A flash of gold, too bright, too fast to be a trick of the light.

Then the knock came again, harder this time, and neither of them moved to answer it.