Page 89 of Steel Vengeance

Stitch raised an eyebrow, glancing over briefly. “What happened?”

She hadn’t planned on talking about it, but once she started, the words just spilled out. She told him about her mom’s death and her dad’s downward spiral—how the drinking had taken over and eventually, how it all ended.

“I got there too late,” she said quietly. “He’d already jumped.”

“Shit,” he muttered. “That’s rough. How old were you?”

“Almost seventeen. Two days before my birthday.”

“Damn,” he murmured, nodding slightly. “I get that. Birthdays are... hard.”

She knew he was thinking about Soraya. There was a silence, heavy but not uncomfortable, just the two of them processing their own grief.

“So, what happened after?” he asked.

“I went to live with my grandmother. She’s the one who taught me Urdu.”

“Is she from the Middle East?” he asked, glancing at her again, curious.

“No, but her mom was. She married an American engineer and moved to the States. Grandma was born in Seattle. I’m the only one who’s ever been back to her birthplace.”

He gave a low whistle. “That’s why Matthew was so keen on you, huh? Not just the language, but the whole package.”

She sighed, the mention of Matthew still a sore spot. “Yeah. Makes sense now. I thought he cared about me, but I was just... useful. Pretty naive, right?”

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up,” he said, a slight edge to his voice. “Love makes fools of us all.”

“Oh, I don’t know if it was love,” she admitted quickly. “Maybe just... infatuation. Definitely not love.”

Stitch shot her a look, a small grin tugging at his lips. “Never been in love before?”

The engine’s steady hum filled the pause before she answered. “No. Not really. My dad kind of ruined the whole idea of marriage for me. He was awful to my mom. I don’t ever want that.”

“Not all men are like that, you know,” he said, his voice low.

She knew he wasn’t like that. Not after everything. Not after the way he’d held her the other night, how gentle he’d been despite the rough edges.

Stitch wasn’t some out-of-control drunk who hit his wife—no, he was something else. A fighter, sure, but not in the way her dad had been. He fought for real. He killed people when he had to.

Like Jeremy. That had been hours ago, and she had almost forgotten. But how many others had there been? How many lives had he taken?

But then she thought about Fatima, how tender he’d been patching her up, making sure she was safe.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

He was such a contradiction. Tough, deadly, a force to be reckoned with—yet he could be so gentle.

A delicious, mind-bending, pulse-racing contradiction.

And somewhere along the line, she’d fallen for him. Hard.

But of course, he wasn’t hers to have. He belonged to someone else, someone he’d lost but would never forget.

Soraya.

How could she ever compete with a memory?

Her heart ached, and she leaned back, closing her eyes, letting the silence of the car wrap around her.