The bedroom was silent, save for the hum of the monitors, but the air felt charged with the echoes of the crude jokes from downstairs. Rhoda couldn't stop shaking. The way Cal and Jonah and the two other men who looked rougher and more barbaric had laughed about her, the way Miller had looked at the ceiling—it felt like the walls were closing in.
She needed to move. She needed to find something, anything, to use as leverage or a weapon. She turned to the heavy wardrobe, her fingers frantically searching the dark wood.
"You really can't help yourself, can you?"
The voice was like a whip crack in the quiet room. Rhoda spun around, a soft gasp escaping her. Evan was leaning against the closed door, his silhouette dark against the wood. He looked tired, his jaw shadowed with stubble, but his eyes were as sharp as ever.
"Do you think they believed your lies?"
He raised a brow and leisurely walked towards her.
Evan grabbed her wrists, his grip like iron manacles. He pulled her flush against him, his ink-black eyes burning with a sudden, dark intensity. "I told them you were mine because it's the only thing keeping Miller from dragging you into the warehouse and finding out exactly how much precision I put into you. You think those jokes were just talk? They're sharks, Rhoda. They smell blood, and right now, you're bleeding."
"I'd rather face them than stay in this room with a man who'd stalked me for about a year!" she spat, struggling against him.
"You don't mean that," Evan rasped, his face inches from hers. "You're angry because I knew you before you knew me. You're angry because I saw the parts of you that you hide from everyone else. But don't mistake my obsession for weakness. I did what I had to do to ensure we both got out of this."
"We?" Rhoda laughed, a jagged, hysterical sound. "There is no we. There's just a ghost and his prisoner. If you're done using me for the codes, let me go. Let Miller have me. At least he's honest about being a monster."
Evan's expression shifted, the cold calculation breaking for a second to reveal a raw, terrifying possessiveness. He shoved her back onto the bed, looming over her. "You want honesty? Fine. The codes were a lie. I don't need you for the encryption. I kept you here because I couldn't stand the thought of you walking away after the job was done. I spent a year making you the center of my universe, and I'm not letting you go back to being a nobody at a bank."
The confession hung in the air, heavier than the money downstairs. Rhoda stared up at him, the true depth of his madness finally laid bare. He hadn't just used her for a heist; he had stolen her life to fill a void in his own.
"So, are you going to give me a promotion to being your secretary or what—?
Rhoda stared up at him, her chest tight, her thoughts moving too fast and not fast enough at the same time. This wasn't obsession in the abstract. This was meticulous, intimate, suffocating. He hadn't just watched her.
He had curated her.
Slowly, Evan straightened and stepped back, as if the distance might undo what he'd just revealed. His face sealed itself again, the familiar calm returning — but it was thinner now, strained at the edges.
From somewhere below, a door closed.
Not slammed.
Placed.
The sound threaded straight through Rhoda's spine.
Evan turned his head slightly, listening. His posture changed — not panicked, not rushed — but alert in a way that felt dangerous. After a moment, he exhaled through his nose.
"They're not done," he said quietly.
Rhoda pushed herself upright, hugging her arms around her middle. "Done with what?"
"With you."
The words hollowed her out.
Evan crossed the room, checking the locks with quick, practiced motions. The window. The door. The secondary latch she hadn't noticed before. He moved like a man sealing a vault, not like someone preparing for sleep.
"They won't rush this," he continued. "Miller doesn't rush. He lets fear do the work for him."
Fear.
The word landed too easily.
Rhoda's gaze drifted to the wardrobe, to the open panel, to the scattered pieces of her life still lying on the floor. Evidence of being known too well. Evidence of being wanted too much.
She swallowed.
"What happens now?" she asked.
Evan turned back to her. His eyes flicked over her face, the way her hands trembled, the way she kept glancing at the door. Something unreadable passed through his expression.
"Now we wait," he said.
Her pulse spiked. The answer came too quickly.
She hesitated, then forced the words out. "Don't leave."
Evan froze.
"I don't mean—" Her voice faltered, embarrassment and fear tangling together. "I just—after what they were saying, with all these going on —" She shook her head. "I can't be in this room by myself tonight."
Silence stretched.
Evan studied her, his gaze sharp but not cruel. Calculating, yes — but also anchored, steady in a way that made her chest ache with confused relief.
"You're not asking because you trust me," he said.
"No," she whispered. "I'm asking because I don't trust them."
A beat passed. Then, with a slow, deliberate movement, Evan reached for the hem of his black t-shirt and pulled it over his head. Rhoda's breath hitched. In the dim light, the map of his body was revealed—scars from a life of violence etched into hard, corded muscle. He looked like a warrior from a darker age, beautiful and terrifying.
He unbuckled his holster, setting the heavy handgun on the nightstand with a metallic clack that sounded like a vow.
"I'll stay," his voice was low.
Her shoulders sagged, the tension releasing all at once. She hadn't realized how tightly she'd been holding herself together until that moment.
"But understand this," he added, his voice low. "Staying doesn't make this safe. It just makes it quieter."
She managed a shaky laugh. "I'll take quiet."
He kicked off his boots and moved toward the bed.
He didn't crawl under the covers with her. Instead, he lay on top of the duvet at the very edge of the bed, his back to her. He was a wall of heat and muscle, a silent guardian between her and the door.
"Go to sleep, Rhoda," he murmured, his voice sounding deeper in the shadows.
Rhoda lay back slowly, the silk rustling beneath her. She stayed on her side of the vast mattress, staring at the broad expanse of his back. The tension in her shoulders began to leak away, replaced by a confusing, heavy warmth. She could smell him—rain, expensive soap, and the faint, expensive tobacco. Every instinct Rhoda had told her she was making the wrong choice — but every other option felt worse.