Page 10 of At Your Mercy
He cocked his head, like he was deciding whether or not to obey. Then he eased back, knife slipping from my throat, his weight lifting off me as fluidly as it had come down. He perched on the edge of the bed like a cat, calm, collected, lips still glistening.
“I hope we have this much fun next time,” he mused, wiping the saliva from the corner of his mouth with a thumb.
My gun hand didn’t waver, but my heart was still racing. “You’ve got a real funny way of asking for a second meeting.”
“Not asking,” he said, rising to his feet with deliberate grace.
He glanced once more at the barrel of the gun, a flicker of something unreadable passing over his face, then headed for the bedroom door.
“Next time,” he said, looking back at me over his shoulder, “don’t call me an amateur.”
And just like that, he was gone, leaving me alone in the dark, gun in hand, pulse pounding in my throat, and the faint taste of his scent in the air.
I stared into the dark space of my room for longer than necessary after I heard the front door click shut, trying to wrap my head around what just happened. Eventually, I shuffled out of bed, the mattress groaning. The pistol felt foreign in my hand when I set it on the nightstand. I walked out to the kitchen on autopilot, poured a tall glass of water, and let the coolness do a little work on my nerves while I tried to think.
I should have called my own team right away, but I wanted to gather the facts before involving other people. I dialed the front desk instead, voice flat and clipped.
“I need a list of everyone who entered and exited the building over the past hour,” I said briskly.
“Mr. Cohen, we haven’t had any activity down here for almost three hours,” the woman on the other end said.
“That’s not possible,” I grunted, “because I just had an unwelcome visitor at my door.” She didn’t need to know that he’d gotten further than just the door. I didn’t need nor want law enforcement involved.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, sir!” she gasped. “Let me double-check.” The line went quiet, the only noise being the light clicking of her keyboard. After a minute, she said apologetically, “No reports of forced entry. Our night guard didn’t notice anything suspicious, and the access logs show no doors forced open.”
“No alarms anywhere in the building?” I asked, rubbing the back of my neck. “What about motion sensors? Cameras? Did they pick anything up?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cohen. The night guard would have alerted us if anything strange showed—”
I hung up before she could finish, a taste of copper in my mouth. That didn’t line up. My building’s system was wired. The alarm hookup was a professional setup—backup battery, redundant sensors. If someone had slipped past all of it, either they were very good, or someone inside had helped.
My apartment’s own security feed was the only thing that would tell me the truth. I moved to the couch where I’d left my laptop and pulled up my security software.
Timestamp: 02:13 a.m.
The hallway camera outside my door was grainy, the way those things always were at night, but the silhouette that passed into the frame was unmistakable—tall and angular. Ro’s white hair caught in the dim emergency light like an apparition. He walked with a lazy, dangerous glide, not appearing nervous in the slightest about breaking in.
He didn’t mess with the buzzer. He didn’t use any visible keycard. He put his hand on the handle, and the door simply opened.
I rewound, watched the timestamp tick backward and forward. My front door’s lock was a multi-layered system with an electronic strike, deadbolt, and reinforced latch. The camera had a wide view; there was no crouched figure, no accomplice at his side or watching from the shadows. Ro had reached for the handle with his free hand and, in one clean motion, slipped past the latch as if it weren’t there. The strike plate clicked like someone had opened it from the inside.
My brain scrambled for explanations. Magnetic bypass? A slim tool that manipulated the strike? A duplicate fob? A remote?
Cold, terrible awe slid down my spine—this kid could get into a sealed, alarmed apartment as easily as walking through a doorway.
He was going to give me a goddamn brain aneurysm.
I hit the bedroom cam—because yes, security should extend to the bedroom, and it wasn’t like I ever had anyone join me in there anyway. He slipped into my room with a silent ease, crawled into my bed like he belonged there, held a blade to my throat, then gave fucking fellatio to my gun. He’d shown mea capability I’d never expected from him. And he’d done it all without tripping a single alarm that anyone else could find.
I ran the footage again and again, each replay turning up a new tick of detail I hadn’t seen the first time—how his shoulders relaxed when the door opened, the way his fingers might have brushed the strike plate, the way he’d looked around my living room and kitchen like he was a visitor at a museum.
I shut the feed off and folded my hands hard on the counter until my knuckles whitened.
He was playing with me.
He could’ve easily killed me, and yet all he’d done was nick my skin.
I set the clips to export, then picked up my phone. Ichabod’s name filled the screen.
