Chapter 8 - Tending the Wound
The private study on the second floor was quiet, illuminated only by the warm glow of a desk lamp. I stood beside the mahogany cabinet, dipping a clean cloth into a porcelain bowl of antiseptic water. When I turned back toward the leather armchair, Ronan was sitting there, his black suit jacket discarded and his left shirtsleeve torn at the shoulder, revealing a bruised, bleeding laceration he'd picked up during the greenhouse scuffle.
"Sit still," I murmured, stepping closer.
Ronan didn't utter a word, his piercing gaze fixed on my face as I knelt beside his chair. My hands were steady now, though every brush of my fingertips against his warm skin sent a tremor through my pulse. I carefully dabbed the antiseptic across the torn flesh of his arm, watching his jaw muscles flex with every sting.
"You didn't have to jump into the middle of that," I said quietly, breaking the heavy silence. "The folio could have been replaced."
"The folio doesn't matter," Ronan replied, his voice a low, gravelly hum in the quiet room. "You do."
I stopped moving, the cloth hovering an inch above his skin. I looked up into his dark eyes, searching for the ruthless mafia boss everyone in the estate feared, but finding only a profound, exhausted vulnerability.
"Why?" I asked, the word slipping out before I could censor it. "A week ago, I was just a stray found in the East Wing. Now you're risking your life to keep me safe from your own associates."
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"Because you carry my brother's ghost," Ronan said softly, leaning forward until the space between us felt dangerously narrow. "And because, for the first time in ten years, I see someone in this house who isn't afraid of what I am. You look right through the suits, the tattoos, the threats... and you see the prison we're all trapped in."
He reached out, his warm calloused fingers gently cupping my chin. His thumb brushed across my cheekbone, tracing the line of my skin with a tenderness that defied every law of the world we inhabited. My breath hitched. The adversarial walls we had built around ourselves cracked entirely, leaving us exposed to a pull neither of us could deny.
