Page 29 of Jamie

I leaned into the tiles, one hand braced flat against the wall, chest heaving as if I’d run a mile, not justwalked across my bedroom and stripped down. My head throbbed with too many things—talking to Lassiter, trying to get intel, the kids, the fire… Jamie’s mouth, Jamie’s eyes, the way he’d looked at me when I’d pushed him to his knees as if he wanted me to destroy him.

He’d killed those men. Slit their throats, left them to burn, as if it didn’t matter to him.

As if nothing could touch him.

And I wasn’t a killer. That line—thatline—I hadn’t crossed. Not yet. I told myself I wouldn’t. I told myself that was what kept me clean. But I’d watched him kill Ricardo.Watched him.What the fuck did that make me? My jaw tightened.

The steam closed around me, hot and thick and blinding, but guilt clawed at the back of my throat, mixing with the sick twist of relief that the kids were safe, or the unbearable, maddening, hard truth of what my body was doing now. My cock was hard.

Already.

As if it couldn’t tell the difference between power and panic, fury and lust. As if it didn’t know Jamie had blood on his hands and I still wanted to pull him back here andtake him. I squeezed my eyes shut.

You’re not a killer.That was what I told myself. But if Jamie had looked up at me again, had touchedme again—God, if he’dbegged—I would’ve done whatever the hell he wanted. And that scared the shit out of me. I scrubbed a hand down my chest, trying to will it away. The tension. The need. But I couldn’t shake it—his voice, his breath on my skin, the way he’d opened for me like it was the only thing keeping him sane. The only thing keepingmesane. This wasn’t clean. It wasn’t safe. It wasn’tright.

And still, my hips jerked forward, chasing friction, release, and something that might feel like control but never would be. I wanted to be angry with him. I tried to hold on to that fury. I had to keep our distance, but all I could feel was the echo of my cock in his mouth, the desperate way he’d needed me to claim him, ruin him,anchorhim.

And all I could see behind my eyes was the moment he’d slit Ricardo’s throat. No hesitation. My hand slammed into the tile with a hollow thud. I wasn’t ready to deal with what that meant, and I lost myself in thoughts of fucking an anonymous mouth, not blue-eyed, blond, Jamie, with his eyes full of fire.

NotPretty.

But when I painted the tile with my release, I couldn’t catch my breath.

And that fucking hurt.

Awake and headingfor a new day, I stared at my reflection—impeccable. Pressed. Polished. The mirror didn’t lie, but it didn’t tell the whole story either. As if nothing had happened. As if I hadn’t spent the night sweating through thousand-thread-count sheets, flinching awake every hour, replaying the grainy flashes of memory from a club backroom soaked in blood and adrenaline, the kids we’d gotten out, and Jamie’s wrecked, beautiful mouth.

My court armor was midnight black Tom Ford, a crisp white shirt and a surgical and deliberate knot in my tie. I adjusted my cufflinks with steady hands, though my stomach hadn’t unclenched since 3 a.m., when I’d jolted out of another restless half-sleep and rechecked the camera feed and the app on my phone, which Caleb had created to track news. And again. And again.

There’d been no more messages from Mickey overnight. No news of the kids, which meant they were safe and alive. For now. But my mind kept circling the same cold, jagged loop: Were there cameras we didn’t know about at the club?

Caleb had been working last night and would have scrubbed any footage he’d found of me, and I hoped to fuck, Jamie, as well. Had someone caught us on tape that Caleb couldn’t fix? The kids out theback? Jamie in that hallway? Me a shadow behind him, blood on the floor, a knife in his hand? Did I look surprised? Or had I acted as if I were complicit?

I didn’t do this shit. I was calm and composed and in control.

Caleb had already started to spin the story with whispers on the right platforms. Three bodies. Two with records. One still unnamed.Gang-related shooting in an underground club with suspected drug ties.That was what they were saying. Clean, clinical, sleazy. Wrapped in enough implication to turn everyone off caring.

“Fuck,” I mumbled, then straightened. “Good,” I said in my best court voice. “Let it stay that way.” There, that was better.

Let the world think it was simply another score settled between scumbags. I didn’t care what the public thought of the dead—I just needed them not looking too closely at the living. Because if anyone started digging? If someone put my name near that place, near thatnight? If the wrong defense attorney caught a whisper of it in the wind?

I couldn’t protect anyone. I couldn’t do my job.

I smoothed down the lapels of my jacket, adjusted how it sat across my shoulders, and pulled on the version of myself no one questioned. The onewho won arguments with a raised brow and took down district attorneys with three words or less. The one who hadn’t let a killer fall to his knees and beg for ruin. This was my compartmentalization. My ritual.

Six a.m. Caffeinated. Dressed like a lawyer. Due in court by ten.

I looked perfect even if I didn’t feel clean. I fastened the final button on my jacket, stared myself down in the mirror, and shut every door inside me. I couldn’t afford to feel today.

When I reached my building, I stepped out of the elevator into the 17th-floor reception to my law office all calm as if I hadn’t watched someone die twenty feet from me less than twelve hours ago.

“Good morning, Mr. McKendrick,” Andrea said, stepping in smoothly beside me, latte in one hand, tablet in the other. “Court at ten, but Judge Alston’s already running behind on the Jenkins pre-trial. You’ve got ten minutes to brief with Diaz and Chen. You asked to see the statement edits for Barrett, I flagged the key changes?—”

“Email those to my phone, please,” I said, taking the coffee, nodding as if I’d slept more than two hours and my bones didn’t ache from clenching through every hour of the night. I gave her a small smile Ididn’t feel. “You’re the best, Andrea.” She smiled back. “Can you give me an hour?”

She knew exactly what the team huddled in the Cave did, but she stayed away from it all—plausible deniability—on my instructions. She was the everyday face of what I did, and she understood I needed that separation.

I shut the door behind me, inhaled the scent of dark roast, bergamot, and leather. Familiar ground. My office looked the same as it always did—clean lines, chrome and charcoal, a view of the city’s bones below. Controlled. Ordered. Mine. I locked the door, then moved to the side entrance into the Cave. Caleb was already there, laptop open, sleeves rolled, the edge of his tie slightly crooked. He looked as if he’d been up all night too.

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