Something small and pale on the dresser.
A piece of paper that wasn’t there before.
I frown, my stomach knotting. The air changes around me, the way it does when something’s wrong. I pad toward the dresser, barely breathing, and pick up the folded slip.
The handwriting is sharp. Slanted. Foreign.
Your husband can’t protect you forever.
My fingers go cold.
I spin around on instinct, scanning the room, the windows, the locked door. No broken glass. No creaks. Adrian is still asleep, the gun unmoved.
But someone’s been here.
Someone came inside this room—my room—without either of us knowing. Someone got past the guards. Past Adrian. Past the man who kills without blinking.
My heart thunders in my chest, and for the first time since I entered this house, I feel something worse than hate or rage.
I feel hunted.
And for the first time—I don’t know if Adrian can stop what’s coming.
Chapter 10 – Adrian
I wake with a jolt.
My neck aches from the awkward angle I slept in, and the weight of the gun across my lap reminds me why I stayed here in the first place. I sit up, eyes instantly locking on her.
Jennie.
She’s standing in front of the dresser, motionless, like she’s carved from stone. Her face is pale. Haunted. Her fingers are clutched tight around something—a piece of paper. My pulse spikes.
I’m on my feet in two strides.
“Jennie.”
She doesn’t even flinch when I call her name. That’s when I know something is wrong. Deeply wrong.
I reach for her, taking the note from her trembling hand. Her eyes don’t leave the mirror as I unfold it. One sentence. That’s all it takes to spike fire into my blood.
Your husband can’t protect you forever.
I stare at the words, my jaw tightening.
This house is locked down tighter than a military compound. Guards at every post. Doors reinforced. Cameras covering every hallway and entrance. No one should’ve been able to get this close. No one.
But someone did.
“Who the fuck got in here?” I mutter under my breath, more to myself than her.
Jennie turns, then, finally, her voice quiet but shaky. “It was right there on the dresser when I woke up.”
She points to the spot like it might still burn her.
I move fast. I check the windows—locked. No sign of forced entry. The room’s untouched. No disturbance in the duston the sill. I yank open the bedroom door and look down the hall. Two guards stand stationed at the far end, straight-backed and alert.
One of them is getting fired today. Maybe both.