“All right, baby boy, one more stitch and you will be good to go.”

The nurse smiles at me as she finishes stitching up my cut. The poor woman is doing her best to lighten my foul mood, but all I want to do is get out of here and find the asshole who attacked me tonight. I’m still pissed that he was able to escape and that I hadn’t been quick enough to stop him. I was stronger than him, I knew that for sure. But he had caught me by surprise and went straight for me with the knife. Even when he had stabbed me, I still had managed to land a punch to his face. But I had underestimated how deeply he had cut me and when he had come at me again, I had fallen. Only when Daphni came out, swinging her guitar, did I realize how badly I had been hurt. Tonight it had been clear that Daphni had been the one to save me. And I hated that. Because it was my job to protect her, and I had let her down.

When the nurse finally finishes, I manage to grunt out a quick “thank you.” Sensing that I’ve reached my limit, she turns to Daphni and hands her a small brown bag with extra bandages and ointment.

As she instructs Daphni on how to clean and care for the wound, one of the detectives returns to the room, a somber expression on his face.

“Any news, detective?” I ask the detective.

“Actually, yes. Unfortunately, we were not able to capture him, but it looks like he did leave something at the scene of the crime.”

“He left something at my house?” Daphni asks, her head swiveling as she turns away from the nurse, her face pale with concern.

“Yes, it was a doll. But—and this may be a little upsetting to you—it was…modified.”

“Modified?” I ask.

“Yes. The head was detached from the body and there was a noose around it. This is a clear departure from his current MO. He is becoming more impulsive, and we have reason to believe you are in very real danger, Ms. Monroe.”

Daphni sinks down on the edge of the bed, her shoulders falling forward. Instinctively, I rub a comforting hand on her thigh.

“Any leads on how he even got into the house in the first place?” I ask.

The detective shakes his head. “It doesn’t appear as if the alarm was tampered with.”

Daphni straightens and looks at the detective alarmed. “What does that mean?”

“It means that whoever broke into your house knew the passcode to your alarm system.”

Daphni looks at me, her brow knit in confusion.

I shake my head. “That’s impossible. Less than a handful of people know that code. We change it weekly and send it out to the team. Everyone has been thoroughly vetted.”

The detective shrugs. “How do you send everyone the code?”

“We get it in an email,” Daphni answers.

A shadow crosses over his face as he furrows his brow in thought. “My guess is that maybe you got hacked. Could be that someone you don’t know has access to your email. My suggestion would be to change all your passwords.”

I fight the anger I feel at myself for overlooking such an obvious explanation. How could I have overlooked such a serious flaw in my system? Celebrities like Daphni were always getting hacked. She was terrible about leaving her phone unattended and anyone could have easily grabbed it.

“What do you recommend we do, detective? Am I safe at home?” Daphni asks.

“We can do extra patrols, and of course you can hire extra men for security. But if you want my opinion, I think you should go away for a while. It looks like the intruder left behind some clues, so we may have some DNA to test. In the meantime, get out of town, get away from all this and let us do our work.”

Daphni nods thoughtfully, her silence confirming her fear. I reach out my hand to shake his. “Thank you.”

“You call me now if you need anything,” he says before slipping out of the room.

Keeping my hand on her thigh, I give her a gentle squeeze. “Are you okay?”

She turns to look at me, her eyes laced with concern. “I’m more worried about you.”

I let out a curse and pull my hand away. She turns in the bed to face me. “Roman, what is wrong with you?”

Falling back in the bed, I run my hand through my hair. “I’m just angry with myself right now.”

“Why are you angry at yourself?” Daphni asks, her brow knitted in worry and confusion.

“I practically invited that prick in. I was the one who installed the security system and came up with the genius idea to email out the passcode. I’m the one who was supposed to protect you and I let you down.”

Daphni’s hand grabs mine. “Roman, you saved me,” she says, squeezing my hand in hers. “You told me to hide and then you went off to confront him. You did protect me.”

I shake my head. “You were the one who saved me,” I argue.

She drops my hand and stands up from the bed, her eyes flashing with annoyance. “So that’s what you’re pissed about, is it? Tell me: are you more angry that it was a woman who saved you, or that it was me?”

I push myself up again in a sitting position, ignoring the shooting pain at my side. “Hold up,” I say, waving my hands in defense. “Don’t make me out to be some misogynistic pig. It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like?” she asks, her hands propped on her hips as she narrows her feisty eyes down at me.

“Seriously, Daphni? I couldn’t protect you! God, if anything had happened to you, I couldn’t recover from that. Damnit, don’t you see that?”

The words leave my mouth before I have a chance to call them back. I’m exposed: she knows now the power she holds over me. Because it’s true, if anything ever happened to her, it would destroy me.

Daphni’s face softens and her blazing eyes pierce mine. As our eyes lock, the thousand things we wish we could say seem to pass between us. After a long moment, she nods and sits down again on the bed, closer to me. She places her small hand on my chest. “Nothing happened. I’m okay. We’re okay,” she whispers as she keeps her gaze leveled on mine.

“We’re okay,” I echo, nodding as I repeat the words silently in my head. I need to move on. I can’t keep lingering on what could have happened, I need to focus on the present and on protecting Daphni.

“Come on, let’s go home. The nurse said you’re good to go.”

“No, we can’t go back,” I say as I swing my legs over the bed.

“Well, where should we go?”

“Maybe a hotel for the night.”

Daphni shakes her head. “No, I can’t do that. I’ll get swarmed. We need to go somewhere no one will know us.” She bites down on her lip as she thinks. “I have a house in Malibu. It’s under an alias. No one knows about it. We can go there.”

I nod in agreement and after getting the all-clear from the nurse, we call a cab to bring us back to the house and pack our things. As we walk out of the room, I let Daphni loop her arms around my waist. I don’t have it in me to tell her I’m okay, that I don’t need her to help me walk. Because as pathetic as it sounds, the feel of her on me is just too tempting. It will take a lifetime for me to forget the fear I had felt when I felt the knife slice my skin and I realized I may not be able to protect her. So, if all I can have with her is this moment, her arms wrapped around me, I’ll take it. I’ll take anything she gives me.