“You care too much, sweetheart.”

The words slipped from his split lips before he could swallow them back. Maybe it was the concussion. Maybe the blood loss. Maybe the rain running cold down his spine. He didn’t use names like that. Didn’t let anything sound soft.

She shouldn’t have been there. His fingers twitched at his side out of habit, searching for a trigger that wasn’t meant for her. She wasn’t a threat—at least not the kind he knew how to handle.

She’d gotten past his defenses without ever trying to. Always lingering outside crime scenes with her notebook, scribbling beneath streetlights for whatever half-finished article waited on her kitchen table. In her words, he wasn’t the Punisher of Hell’s Kitchen. He was just a nameless vigilante. Faceless. A necessary rumor cleaning up what the police couldn’t.

And then he became Frank.

The first time he climbed through her fire escape, she nearly shot him. He didn’t blink at the sight of the revolver—her father’s, she’d said later, hands still shaking. The second time, there was no gun. Not the third. Not the fourth. Just silence settling heavy in the apartment, broken by the tear of gauze and the quiet snip of scissors.

Even the Malinois barely lifted his head.

My brother got into a lot of fight, she’d told him once, catching him watching her steady hands.

Frank didn’t talk. He endured. Needle through skin, bone set back into place—he didn’t flinch. Pain was simple. Pain made sense.

What didn’t make sense was the feeling she left behind. Not warmth. Something sharper. Colder. A tightening in his chest that felt too close to fear. Not for himself.

For her.

A need to shield her from the rot of the city.

From men like him.