Page 26 of Roar Me Like You Mean It
JENNIFER
The knock at the door is what wakes me, sharp and precise, not the fumbling kind of housekeeping or the hesitant tap of room service. My eyes open slow, heavy with sleep, but the second I register that sound my pulse kicks fast.
I sit up too quickly, the sheet sliding from my body, and for a minute I just stare around the room, confused, trying to put myself back together. The bed smells of smoke and whiskey, of something more primal underneath, and then the memory hits me. Him. Malek. His hands, his mouth, the weight of his body against mine. The heat rushes into my face before I can shove it down.
The knock comes again, followed by a voice I don’t recognize, low and professional. “Miss Callahan. Time to go.”
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and spot the folded paper on the nightstand. My name isn’t written on it, but I know it’s for me. My hand shakes when I pick it up. The words inside are few.You are safe. Leave now.
My chest tightens so hard I can’t breathe. That’s it. No explanation, no apology, no promise. Just a dismissal. After everything that happened, after what we did, after the way hiseyes burned into mine as if he saw straight through every wall I ever built. He left me with a note like I was nothing more than an inconvenience to be ushered out with the trash.
“Miss Callahan,” the voice says again, sharper this time.
I crumple the note in my fist, shove it into the pocket of my coat, and force myself to stand. My legs feel weak, my body sore, but I will not let whoever waits behind that door see it.
When I open it, two men in black stand in the hall, both expressionless, both too polished to be anything but his people. They don’t touch me, don’t threaten me, just step aside and gesture for me to follow.
The hallways are narrow, stone walls damp with age, the kind of place built to keep secrets. I keep my head high as we walk, though inside I feel like I’m unraveling thread by thread. No one speaks. No one looks at me. At the door, one of them pulls it open to the pale light of morning, and I step into the street like I’m being expelled from a world I never should have entered in the first place.
There’s a car waiting. They don’t shove me inside, don’t restrain me. One simply opens the door, and the other says, “Safe passage. That’s all.”
I climb in without a word.
The city passes in a blur—bridges, trams, markets opening for the day—but I don’t see any of it. All I see is the memory of him pacing the room, his eyes hard, his mouth grim, already pulling away before I had a chance to stop him. I hate myself for the ache it leaves, the hollow that spreads wider with every block we put between us.
When they finally drop me at the airport, they don’t wait to see me through security. The car is gone before I turn around.
Home should feel like control. It should feel like familiar ground where I can reset, where I can put my head down and work until I’ve wrestled this whole mess into something I canuse against him. But when I step into my apartment, it doesn’t feel like mine anymore. The walls seem too white, too sterile, the furniture too cold. Every shadow looks like it’s holding his shape.
I throw my coat onto the counter, drop my bag on the floor, and pace the length of the living room. My nerves are shredded, my skin still humming from his touch, and I can’t shake the fury building in my chest. He abandoned me. Worse than that—he touched me, claimed me with his hands and his mouth and his body, and then decided it meant nothing. He thought he could walk away with a note and I would just accept it.
My laugh is bitter, sharp. “Coward.”
The word echoes off the walls, too loud in the silence.
I need focus. I need to bury this, crush it down until it doesn’t matter, until all that’s left is the case, the evidence, the man I’m meant to destroy.
I head straight for my desk, pull the laptop close, and log into the secure system. The screen glows cold blue, lines of code flickering as the DOJ network wakes. I start pulling up files, tracing accounts, digging into the shell companies again. I tell myself this is what matters. Not him, not what happened, not the way my body betrays me every time I close my eyes and remember. Just the work.
Hours pass. Coffee goes cold beside me. I lose myself in numbers and names, in shipments routed through Luxembourg, in accounts that bleed into Panama and vanish in the Caymans. Every thread circles back to Thorne Strategic, every irregularity pointing toward a machine too big, too ruthless to ever burn from the outside.
But I will. I’ll tear him down, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left of his empire but ash.
The clock on the wall ticks louder than it should. The light fades outside, the city slipping into night again. My eyes burn,my shoulders ache, but I don’t stop until the words blur on the screen. Only when exhaustion finally drags me under do I stumble to the bed.
Sleep doesn’t bring rest.
The dreams come again, heavy and sharp, and this time they don’t let me go.
I’m running through smoke, my lungs screaming, the ground shifting under my feet. Shadows move in the haze, hulking shapes that stalk closer with every step I take. The sound comes next, low and primal, vibrating through the marrow of my bones: the growl I heard in the lab, the one I told myself was memory, was fear, was something I imagined. But here it is again, closer, deeper, wrapping around me like a command.
I turn, and eyes burn through the dark. Not human eyes. Gold, unblinking, ancient. Watching me as though I belong to them, as though they’ve always belonged to me.
I wake with a gasp, sheets tangled around me, sweat damp on my skin. My chest rises and falls too fast, my pulse hammering. The room is dark, quiet, the hum of the city faint through the glass. But I swear I can still feel it, those eyes on me, waiting in the corner of the room just out of reach.
I pull the sheet tighter around myself and close my eyes again, though I know it won’t stop the dreams. They’ll come back. They always do.
And regardless of the fact that I hate it, that I want to deny it, part of me doesn’t want them to stop.
