The silence hits you first. Thick, velvet, loaded. The kind of quiet that means men have cleared the room just for him. You step into the marble-tiled back entrance of the warehouse and every instinct screams at you to run. But you don’t. Because you know whose presence you’re walking into.

Bucky stands near a table draped in dark linen, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, black gloves in one hand, bloodied watch on the other. His jacket’s tossed over a chair, and there’s already a silver pistol cooling by the bourbon glass.

“Close the door behind you.” The words aren’t shouted. They’re whispered. Soft. Deadly.

You do.

He doesn’t turn to face you at first. Just finishes rolling the cuffs of his white shirt, slow and deliberate. You can see the faint smear of red on the collar where someone bled a little too close to him.

“I warned you,” he says, finally facing you. “This life? It doesn’t give second chances. Doesn’t give happy endings. You being here… that’s already a death sentence.”

His gaze rakes over you. Fury and relief flash at war in his blue eyes. “But I’ll be damned if I let them take you from me.”

He steps forward, every footfall echoing. “You still don’t get it, do you? You’re not a secret anymore. You’re a target. And if anyone so much as whispers your name—”

His metal fingers curl gently around your wrist, voice low enough to melt granite.

“—I will paint this city in red. For you.”