Page 67 of Monk

Because there it was—that line I had been trying so desperately not to look at, spoken aloud by a stranger at my gate.

Whatwasmy relationship with John?

Former lover. Current disaster. Old wound. New temptation. The man I had never quite stopped carrying, no matter how much time or pride or anger I had packed on top of him.

None of that was any of this man’s business.

“I’m his attorney,” I said, each word clipped clean. “And unless you have a warrant or a badge, this conversation is over. Move your car. Now.”

He stared at me for a long moment, and I held his gaze even though every instinct in me wanted to end this, to drive through the ditch if I had to, to get to the house and put myself physically between this stranger and my daughter.

Then he laughed.

Actually laughed.

“You’re a fighter,” he said, his tone almost approving. “I can see why he likes you.”

My stomach turned.

It wasn’t flirtation. It wasn’t even admiration, not really. It was the casual certainty in his voice, the suggestion that he knew things he shouldn’t know, that he was standing there with pieces of my life in his hand and enjoying the fact that I understood it. That was what made my stomach turn. Not just fear, but violation. The sickening sense that someone had reached across the boundaries of my life and laid a hand on things that weremine—my work, my history, my daughter, my home. By then, anger was the only thing keeping me upright.

“Get the fuck off my property,” I said. My voice shook, and I hated that it did, hated that fear had found its way in around the edges of my anger. “Or I swear to God, I will call the police and have you arrested for trespassing.”

His smile disappeared. For one beat, two, he just looked at me, his expression flattening into something colder, more measuring. And in that stretched-out silence, the full weight of it landed: This was no longer only about me. Whatever John’s world was, whatever danger came with it, it had found the road to my home. It had found the gate with my family’s name on it.

It had come within reach of my child.

Without another word, he turned and walked back to his sedan. He got in, started the engine, and reversed just enough to clear the driveway before pulling away down the road. As I watched the car go, a cloud of dust rising behind it, I still didn’t move.

My hands were locked so tightly around the steering wheel that my knuckles ached. My heart pounded against my ribs in hard, uneven blows, and my breathing had gone thin and shallow, like my body still hadn’t gotten the message that he was leaving.

Who the hell was that?

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Monk

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the cold. The kind that came from waking up alone in a bed that should have had someone in it. I reached out instinctively, my hand sliding across the sheets where Lina had been sleeping just hours ago.

Empty. Cold.

I sat up slowly, my jaw clenching as I scanned the room. Her clothes were gone from the floor. Her shoes were gone from beside the door. The bathroom door was open, the light off, no sound of running water.

She left. Without waking me. Without saying a goddamn word.

My hands curled into fists against the mattress, my entire body going rigid with a mixture of irritation and something darker, something raw and territorial that made my chest tighten until it almost hurt to breathe. I poured my fucking soul out to her last night. Told her things I never told anyone. Confessed my past, my sins, my shame. Let her see the ugliest parts of me and stayed standing while she looked. Then I held her like I was trying to make up for seven years in one night, like if I wrapped myself around her tightly enough maybe I could keep the world from taking her from me again. And she still left before sunrise.

No goodbye.

No touch on my shoulder. No whispered promise that this hadn’t all been some desperate collision of grief and history and bad timing. Just empty sheets and silence, and me waking up feeling stupid for how much that silence hurt.

I shoved the blankets off and swung my legs over the side of the bed, my feet hitting the floor with a heavy thud. My head was pounding, not from a hangover, but from the sheer weight of everything that had changed in a matter of hours. I had gone to sleep with Lina in my arms and the truth finally out between us, and I had woken up to the same old feeling I’d spent half my life carrying: being left behind. Maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe it wasn’t even true. But feelings didn’t give a shit about fairness. They just sank their teeth in and held on. I grabbed my jeans from the floor and yanked them on, not bothering with a shirt, too agitated to care about anything except the fact that she was gone and I didn’t know what the hell that meant.

Coffee. I needed coffee and maybe some answers. Because if Lina thought she could just slip out of my bed before dawn and avoid the conversation we were going to have about what the fuck had happened last night, she had another think coming.

The kitchen was already occupied when I walked in. Trigger sat at the far end of the long wooden table, shoveling scrambled eggs into his mouth like he hadn’t eaten in a week. Angel was across from him, nursing a cup of coffee and scrolling through his phone with a bored expression. Judd leaned against thecounter near the stove, arms crossed, talking in low tones with Fifty about something I didn’t care enough to listen to.

The smell of bacon and coffee filled the air, and my stomach growled in response, but I wasn’t here for food. I walked straight to the coffeepot and poured myself a cup, black, no sugar. The first sip burned going down, but I didn’t care. I needed the caffeine more than I needed comfort.