All Chapters of His Halo is a Lie: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

At first, I wanted to believe him.I saw him trying. I saw it in the way his eyes lingered on me instead of the corners of a room. I saw it in the way he let me take the gun off the nightstand one night and set it in the drawer without protest. He’d smiled faintly, murmuring, “I don’t need it tonight.”It should have been enough. Maybe for another woman, it would have been.But for me, love had always come with shadows.And shadows don’t vanish just because you close your eyes.I woke one morning to find him already up, making coffee. The smell filled the penthouse, warm and rich, and for a moment it felt normal, like any other morning with any other man.But Saint wasn’t any other man.He stood at the counter in silence, his shoulders tense even as he stirred sugar into my cup the way I liked it. When he turned, his smile was small but real, and my heart clenched.“Morning, angel,” he said softly.I took the cup, fingers brushing his, and tried to match his smile. “Morning.”We sat a

I knew.I knew the moment he came home late, his shirt clean but his eyes carrying shadows. He hadn’t killed, not this time. But he had gone close, too close. There was a look in his face I’d learned to fear, a quiet burn behind his eyes that told me the city was whispering again, and he was listening.He tried to cover it with a kiss. His lips brushed mine, soft, practiced, but I tasted the silence between us. I tasted the lie.And something inside me cracked.I sat at the kitchen table, hands clenched around a mug of tea gone cold. He moved around the room like he always did, deliberate, measured, trying to look calm. But I knew him too well. Every motion was too sharp, too precise. His body carried tension like a weapon.“Where were you?” I asked finally.His shoulders stiffened. He didn’t turn. “Out.”“Out where?”He set his gun on the counter, the sound sharp in the quiet. “Does it matter?”My throat tightened. “Yes. Because every time you walk out that door, I wonder if you’ll c

Peace was not a switch you could flip.Even after Saint swore to me, swore with everything in him, that he was done, I still woke in the night, breathless and afraid, waiting for the sound of a gunshot that never came. I still flinched when a car slowed too long outside the penthouse. I still studied his eyes each time he came home late, searching for shadows.But I also saw something new in him.A softness.It was subtle, but it was there, like sunlight breaking through clouds after years of storm. He still carried tension in his shoulders, still scanned the streets when we walked together, but he laughed more. He held me longer. He smiled like he hadn’t forgotten how.And slowly, I let myself believe.Elise came by one afternoon, arms full of groceries, eyes sharp as always. She looked Saint up and down, then turned to me with a smirk.“You’ve domesticated him,” she teased.Saint only grunted, taking the bags from her hands and disappearing into the kitchen.I rolled my eyes. “Hardl

It took time.At first, I kept waiting for the world to crack. For the silence to shatter into gunfire, for the door to burst open, for Saint to come home with blood on his shirt again. The fear lingered in me like smoke after a fire. Even when he promised me it was over, even when he chose me with his whole heart, I couldn’t shake it.But slowly, the edges softened.Days began to pass without the weight of dread pressing on my chest. Nights ended with laughter instead of nightmares. And somewhere between his kisses and his steady arms, I realized, peace had found me.Or maybe, I had finally allowed myself to find it.It showed in small ways first.I stopped waking in the night to check if he was still there. I stopped flinching every time the elevator hummed outside our door. I stopped studying his face for shadows whenever he came home.Instead, I let myself breathe.I let myself smile without fear it would be stolen.And for the first time in years, I felt like a woman in love inst

Peace was never quiet.Not really. Not when you loved a man like Saint. Peace was a decision we kept making, moment by moment, heartbeat by heartbeat, and sometimes it felt as fragile as glass. Still, I could feel it growing, as though each day we chose each other added another thread of strength to the life we were building.After the night outside the restaurant, I thought I would break. Watching three men call his name like a dare, seeing the anger burn through his body, hearing them laugh at him. It had been a test of everything he had promised me, and for a second I was certain he would fail. But he didn’t. He held my hand, he walked me away, and he refused to feed the fire.That was when I realized peace was possible. Not because the city had grown silent, but because he had.And yet, peace came with a new kind of fear.Because now, every time he passed a test like that, I wondered how much it cost him.The morning after, I woke to find him sitting on the balcony, cigarette smok