Bullets

By the fourth morning, Kieran had stopped flinching every time the elevator chimed.

That was progress. Small, embarrassing progress, but progress. The penthouse had its own vocabulary — the soft machinery of the building settling, the particular hum the kitchen appliances made before dawn, the way the floor-to-ceiling windows caught the first light and turned the whole living area the colour of old paper and he was learning it the way he learned all environments: by paying attention until the unfamiliar became background noise and the anomalies stood out.

What continued to resist categorisation as background noise was Elliot Sinclair himself.

It was twenty past seven. Kieran had already run his morning check of the building's perimeter feeds, cleared the service delivery that came at six, and eaten half a bowl of oatmeal standing at the kitchen window. He was working through the rest of it when Elliot appeared from the direction of the master suite, already in a suit that had no business looking that good before eight in the morning, and dropped onto the stool directly beside Kieran at the island instead of any of the other four available stools.

The entire island was free. Five stools. He chose the one where his thigh pressed against Kieran's.

"Morning," Elliot said, reaching across and stealing a piece of bacon off Kieran's plate with the absolute confidence of someone who had never once in his life considered that this might not be welcome.

Kieran moved his plate six inches to the left. "There's a full plate on the counter. Ryan's assistant restocked the fridge yesterday. You have your own food."

"Yours tastes better." Elliot said it completely seriously, already eating the bacon.

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Most true things don't." He poured himself coffee from the pot Kieran had made and sat back, watching him with that particular unhurried attention that Kieran had clocked on day one and hadn't been able to shake since. "Tell me something about yourself."

"I already answered your background check questions during the intake process."

"I read your background check. That's not the same thing." Elliot propped his elbow on the island, entirely at ease. "You send money home every month. Your sister — Maya, right? She's studying medicine at State University." He said it lightly, matter-of-fact, the way someone mentioned weather.

The back of Kieran's neck went cold. "You went through my financials."

"Standard background check. Nothing invasive." Elliot met his gaze without apology. "You could have taken any number of corporate security positions that would have paid more. Steady hours, less physical risk, better benefits. You take the live-in contracts because they pay a higher daily rate and the accommodation means you're not carrying rent on top of everything else you're covering." He paused. "That's not a criticism. It's just — you work very hard. I was curious why."

Kieran set down his fork. He kept his voice even. "My personal finances are not something I discuss with clients."

"I'm not asking about the finances. I'm asking about you." Elliot's tone was different now — quieter, the performative ease dropped back to something that felt more real. "Maya's what, twenty-two? Twenty-three? It's a long time to be the person holding everything together for someone else."

"She's twenty-one. And she doesn't need holding together. She's the smartest person I know." Kieran picked up his fork again because he wasn't going to let this conversation take his breakfast from him as well. "She needs tuition paid and someone to answer her calls at two in the morning when anatomy is kicking her ass. That's not a hardship. That's just family."

Elliot was quiet for a moment. "You sound like you mean that."

"I do mean it."

"Most people who say things like that are performing generosity. You're actually annoyed that I implied it costs you something." He studied Kieran with those gold eyes that missed too much. "Interesting."

"What's interesting is that you're going to be late for your eight-forty-five if you don't stop psychoanalysing your bodyguard and get in the car." Kieran stood, rinsed his bowl, and left the bacon behind as a small tactical concession. "Five minutes."

He was already in the hallway when he heard Elliot behind him, quiet and almost to himself: "Interesting."

✦ ✦ ✦

Clara Hayes came to the penthouse on Thursday evening.

Kieran had met her briefly at Sinclair Industries on Wednesday — clocked her composure, her quiet intelligence, the way she'd read his holster positioning in three seconds without making it a thing. He'd filed her as capable and left it at that. Seeing her in Elliot's home was a different data set.

She brought wine and the kind of easy, practiced warmth that came from being raised in rooms where social grace was currency. She kissed Elliot's cheek at the door. Greeted Kieran by name. Asked if he needed anything before she and Elliot sat down to eat, which was the kind of thing people did when they wanted the help to feel included without actually including them.

Kieran took up his position near the terrace windows and did his job.

What he noticed, over the course of two hours, was that the dinner looked the way love was supposed to look from the outside — soft lighting, good wine, laughter at the right intervals, Clara's hand resting over Elliot's on the table. But the interior geometry was off. Elliot was attentive the way a good host was attentive, asking questions, listening, topping up her glass. Not the way a man was attentive to someone he couldn't quite help watching.

When Clara tried to kiss him hello, he'd angled into it so it landed at the corner of his mouth instead of on it. She hadn't reacted. Kieran suspected she was used to not reacting.

After she left, Elliot didn't go to his office the way he usually did. He came into the kitchen where Kieran was field-stripping his secondary weapon on the island, laid out on the cloth he used for the purpose, and poured himself two fingers of something from the cabinet he barely touched during the week.

He sat on the stool — a different one this time, across from Kieran — and watched him work for a moment.

"So," Elliot said. "Clara."

"She seems nice." Kieran didn't look up. He was reassembling the frame, muscle memory taking it apart and rebuilding it while his hands stayed busy and his brain stayed neutral. "She's clearly fond of you."

"She is." He turned the glass slowly. "She's perfect, actually. That's the correct word for her. Good family, good education, the kind of omega my grandmother spent three years identifying as suitable. Everything the Sinclair board wanted on paper for a merger of the appropriate type." He wasn't saying it cruelly. That was the worst part — he was just saying it. Plainly, like a man reading from a document about his own life. "We're getting married in four months."

Kieran set down the slide assembly. "Congratulations."

"Is it?" The word came out small and tired. "Marrying someone because the families have been friends for twenty years? Because it's what's done? Because it solves seventeen different social and corporate problems in one ceremony?" He drank. "I'm not sure congratulations is the right word for that."

Kieran should have let it go. He was aware of this. He picked up the barrel instead and said, "Why are you telling me this?"

Elliot looked at him across the kitchen island with its scattered weapon components and its careful professional distance. "Because you're here. And you don't have a stake in what I say." He paused. "And because you're the first person I've talked to in months who doesn't want something from me."

"I want a salary and for you to not get shot. That's something."

Elliot almost smiled. It didn't fully arrive. "Have you ever been in love?"

The question landed flat and honest, the way his questions often did when he'd stopped performing. Kieran turned the barrel in his hands. "No."

"Neither have I." He set his glass down with a quiet click. "Isn't that strange? We're both adults who've managed to get this far without it. I'm not sure if that's discipline or damage."

Kieran didn't answer that. He slotted the barrel back into the frame and began reassembling the slide.

"For what it's worth," Elliot said, standing, "I think you'd be good at it. Love, I mean. You're the most attentive person I've ever met and you act like that's a professional quality. But it isn't, really. That's just how you are." He pushed back from the island. "Goodnight, Kieran."

He left. Kieran sat with the assembled gun and the cooling kitchen and the weight of a conversation he hadn't been prepared for, and told himself firmly that Elliot Sinclair's interior life was not his problem.

He was going to keep telling himself that until it became true.