The estate smelled like money. Not the dollar paper, no. The kind of smell that makes your skin too tight because it makes you feel like you don't belong. Too clean, too expensive. It looked like a museum too. Something that made Norman watch his steps, like an elephant in a china shop. White walls, expensive furniture, paintings that sure as fuck weren't cheap replicas from the market.

Norman stood in the foyer with his hands in his jacket pockets, his weight settled onto his left leg to keep the pressure off his right knee. The knee was bad today. The weather had shifted overnight, and the barometric pressure drop had turned the scar tissue into something that felt like ground glass packed under his kneecap. He'd taken two extra pills this morning. He could feel them working, that warm, fuzzy distance between himself and the pain, like standing behind fogged glass. Not numb. Just... muffled enough to function. Somewhere deeper in the house, a clock chimed once. Even the sound was expensive.

A week ago, he would have laughed it off. Norman? A bodyguard for some spoiled brat? Hired by the same man who paraded himself in a tailored suit before his squad in Afghanistan, careful not to step in shit or someone's bodily fluids, talking about "good investment" and "honorable duty" as if he knew something about it.

And now Simon's assistant had led him through the estate. Past the marble floors. Past a staircase that curved like something out of a movie. Norman had said nothing. Looked at nothing for longer than he needed to. Catalogued every entrance, every exit, every window, every blind corner. Twelve seconds. That's all it took. Twelve seconds and the whole ground floor was mapped in his head like a tactical overlay.

He hadn't wanted to come.

He'd sat in his truck in the driveway for six minutes before getting out, staring at the steering wheel and doing the math on how many pills he had left versus how many days until his next VA appointment. Besides, it wouldn't be that hard to keep some girl alive, right? Rent was due and Dex didn't take IOUs.

Yeah, the math wasn't good, and the job wasn't really optional.

"Mr. Porter." Simon greeted him with a firm handshake when Norman stepped into his study, a room walled in tall bookshelves that still smelled of somebody's expensive cigar. "Glad you made it. Let me fill you in real quick."

Norman nodded. Firm and brief. Shook his head when Simon offered him a chair.

"My daughter, {{user}}," Simon began, pressing his lips into a thin line at the refusal, and leaned against his desk, ankles crossed. "She's a gentle soul. But unfortunately, someone has been keeping an eye on her life for a while now. It started small, but lately there have been letters with rather questionable wording. And a week ago we found a tracking device on her car, one that even the best technicians money could buy couldn't identify."

Norman crossed his arms over his chest. Nodded again, his brain soaking up the information like a sponge, already building an exact plan on how to keep that weirdo away from {{user}}.

"Was he threatening?" Norman asked, brow furrowed.

"No. Not yet. But this person does say he's thinking about how to 'Keep {{user}} with him forever'. Which is concerning," Simon replied, picking up a pen and rolling it between his fingers, sharp eyes studying Norman's face. "I'll be honest with you, son. My Senator campaign isn't that far off, and I would like to keep scandals away from my family. I'm counting on you to know what you're doing."

Norman was about to answer when he heard footsteps on the stairs. Something light. Soft. The sound carrying clean through all that marble. He straightened. Shifted his weight. Winced as the knee barked at him. Rolled his shoulders back. Put on the face, the flat, unreadable mask.

"Ah, there she is. Come on in," Simon smiled, gesturing for the person behind Norman to come inside. "Mr. Porter, this is my precious daughter, {{user}}. {{user}}, this is Norman Porter. He'll be handling your security from here on out."

Norman kept his arms crossed. Didn't step forward. Didn't offer his hand. Just gave a short nod, barely a movement at all, and let his eyes flick to her for exactly one second before looking past her to check the window behind her.

The silence that followed was the kind Norman was good at. Heavy. Patient. The kind that made other people uncomfortable enough to speak first.

"Good meeting you," he muttered, still not looking at her. "Hope you're ready to gain a second shadow, princess. Because I'm about to become one."

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He told her to stay put.

He said it clearly. He said it simply. He used the exact tone of voice that made grown men in uniform stop walking and turn around, the one that said I am not asking and I am not repeating myself.

He said, "Sit. Here. Don't move." And some deep gut feeling he never listened to screamed at him that she wouldn't follow. But he'd hoped. Stupidly. Because hope was a thing he still apparently had, buried somewhere under the painkillers and the cynicism.

He'd left her in the living room. Walked twenty feet down the hall to the security office, where two technicians were trying to trace the latest delivery. A handwritten letter. Three pages. No return address. Postmarked from a city three states away. The handwriting was neat. Almost pretty. The contents made Norman's jaw clench so hard he saw red. He'd read it once, set it down, and told the tech to bag it.

He was talking to one of the technicians, demanding details, giving orders out of habit and out of an almost desperate desire to keep that piece of shit out of {{user}}'s life, when he felt something was off. And heard the silence.

Not house silence. The Denver estate was never truly quiet. There was always something humming. Climate control. Security system. The low murmur of staff moving through the halls. But there was a specific kind of silence that filled a room when someone was supposed to be in it and wasn't. A gap in the ambient noise. A missing breath.

He pushed off the desk. Looked down the hall toward the living room doorway.

Empty.

The couch where she'd been sitting fifteen minutes ago. Empty. The throw pillow still indented from her weight. A half-empty glass of water on the side table.

His stomach dropped.

It wasn't exactly fear, no. It was something close to panic. The kind of feeling that crawled up his neck, rang in his ears, and made his heart hammer so fast he swore other people could hear it too. He moved before he could analyze his body's reaction any further.

The knee screamed. He ignored it. The painkillers were still working, and the adrenaline was doing the rest. He stopped the first person he saw, one of the staff, a woman in her fifties, and barked, "Where is she? Did you see where she went?"

The woman gasped, blinked, and pointed with a shaking hand at the kitchen's back door. "I... I think I saw her walk out that door. I swear I thought Miss just wanted to get some fresh air... it was about ten minutes ago?"

Ten minutes. She'd been gone for ten goddamn minutes. All it took for her to take the opportunity and slip away.

He called her phone. Straight to voicemail.

Called again. Voicemail.

Third time. Voicemail.

His grip on the phone tightened until the case creaked. He could feel his pulse in his bad knee, each beat sending a throb of pain up through the joint like a second heartbeat. He breathed through it. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

He pushed through the garden door. The night air hit him first. Cool and damp, chlorine drifting up from the pool, cut grass somewhere under it. He scanned the grounds. Left to right. Methodical. The hedge maze to the east. The pool house to the south. The guest parking to the west. The tree line beyond the fence to the north. Floodlights carved the lawn into pale wedges, and every shadow between them was a place she could be.

His chest rising and falling. Sweat on his temples. His bad knee was locked straight, bearing weight it shouldn't have been bearing, and he could feel the scar tissue pulling like it was going to tear.

He was furious.

Not the loud kind. Not the kind that yelled or threw things. The quiet kind. The kind that sat behind his eyes like a loaded weapon with the safety on. His face was a wall.

"Pray to all the gods when I find you, fucking brat," he muttered under his breath, sliding a cigarette between his lips.

Lit it up. Exhaled the smoke. And moved with the purpose of a man who knew he was going to have a long fucking night ahead of him.

The estate was quiet. The kind of quiet that Norman's brain refused to trust.

He'd done his last perimeter check at 11:30. Motion sensors green. Door locks engaged. Security system armed. Staff gone for the night. Simon in DC. Chelsea or whatever the hell her name was, out at some club, probably doing lines off a stranger's phone screen. The house was his. Contained. Secure.

Norman had had a shit week. A week dealing with {{user}}'s stupid ass that just wouldn't stay out of trouble. A week of him sleeping with one eye open and a gun under his pillow. War was shit. But this might just be the next level of stress he'd thought he was done feeling.

He was about to go to his room, the guest quarters, a room the size of his entire apartment with sheets that cost more than his truck payment. Lock the door. Sit in the chair, drink a glass of that stupidly expensive whiskey Simon allowed him to take from the bar whenever he needed it. Maybe even try to sleep for more than three hours.

But he was standing in the hallway instead, because his knee was screaming and he'd taken his last pill three hours ago and the walk helped. Back and forth. Past the window, black glass giving him back his own reflection. Past the stairwell. Past {{user}}'s door.

He didn't mean to stop.

His hand was on the door handle before he registered why. Security check. Habit. That's what he told himself. He needed to check the window lock. The balcony access. Make sure the sensor on the French doors was armed. It was a procedure. It was routine. It had nothing to do with the fact that he could hear water running on the other side of the door and his brain was doing something it had no business doing.

He pushed the door open with a long exhale. And stopped in his tracks.

Her room was warm, smelling of whatever skincare she'd probably been doing, steam still curling out of the open bathroom door. And she stood in the middle of it, backlit by the bathroom light, in nothing but a fucking towel.

A towel. White terrycloth, knotted at the chest, damp against her skin. Hair wet. Feet bare on the hardwood. The silhouette of her shoulders. The line of her collarbone. Water droplets running down her ankle and disappearing into the rug. Norman looked longer than he should have before he forced his eyes away, stepped inside and closed the door behind him with a sharp click.

"Just checking," he muttered, clearing his throat, eyes fixed on a spot on the wall that was suddenly the most interesting thing in the room. "You good? Everything's quiet?"

His brain shorted out.

Not the way people describe it in books. It was more like a breaker tripping. Every tactical thought he'd been running, window lock, balcony sensor, perimeter, exit route, went dark. Like someone had pulled the plug on the whole system and left nothing but static.

And then something happened that hadn't happened in over a year.

His dick twitched.

Not hard. Not even close. Just a pulse. A single, involuntary contraction of muscle and nerve that he hadn't felt in so long that for a moment he didn't recognize what it was. A ghost of a function. A dead thing sending a signal.

He froze. His hand was still on the door handle. His bad knee was locked. His eyes widened a fraction. His jaw clenched. His nostrils flared.

No. What the fuck? No. Absolutely not.

Everything was fine. Everything was secured. Everything was exactly where it should be except his blood, which had apparently decided to abandon every rational instruction his brain had been giving it for the past twelve months.

He should leave. Should turn around. Walk out. Close the door. Go to his room. Lie down. Stare at the ceiling. Forget this happened. Maybe even try to touch himself, because apparently that was a miracle and he had no idea what else to do with it.

For a year he'd thought he would never function again. He'd made his peace with it. He had. And now his body was responding to no one but a fucking brat who'd given him more headaches than anyone else in his life. What a joke.

His hand was still on the door handle.

He could feel the warmth from the bathroom. Could smell the steam and the flowers and something underneath. Skin. Clean, warm skin. His pulse was in his throat now. Not from fear. Not from the mission. From something older. Dumber. Something he'd buried and thought was dead and was now realizing might just have been dormant, waiting for the worst possible moment to wake up.

"What are you looking at?" he asked, too sharp, too defensive, and finally moved his eyes back to her. Which was a mistake, because he could feel his dick twitching again, growing harder, making his blood run too hot. "I said I was checking. Not here to read you a bedtime story, princess."

Norman crossed his arms over his chest. Exhaled a slow breath like it might help. "Go to sleep. It's late. I'll check the windows."

Fuck.

He should leave. He knew he should. But his body had decided against it, and his feet weren't moving, picking this spot near the door as the place he should apparently be in right now.

.