Chapter 2 A Safe Space

The old warehouse Alex led her to was nothing like Millie expected. A single overhead light buzzed in the ceiling. Millie stood just inside the doorway, her fingers twitching with nerves as Alex double-locked the door behind them.

"Sit," he said, nodding toward a metal chair bolted to the floor beside a rusted desk. It wasn't a suggestion.

She didn't argue.

Her legs were still unsteady from everything that had happened in the last hour. The fight. The alley. The stranger with the ice-cold voice who had appeared like a ghost. She hadn't even had time to process the fact that someone had stood up for her. Infact, with the way his face was so stern she wondered if he really intended to save her or he had worse intentions planned out for her.

"What is this place?"

"Somewhere safe," Alex replied in his detached tone as he tossed his bloodstained jacket onto a hook near the door. His shirt underneath was black, tight around his broad shoulders. He looked like someone born in violence. But tonight, he had used that violence to protect her. Millie found his muscles extremely sexy. Her mind drifted to the feel of his abs at her gentle touch.

"What is your name?" he asked, disrupting her thoughts.

"What?"

Alex paused, meeting her eyes for the first time that night."Your name."

"M..m..millie"

"Where do you stay?"

"Butter street"

"That's quite a distance from where I saw you. Running away from home?"

His voice was a low baritone. It almost sounded like a growl only a kind one. She didn't know what to say since she had been discovered. She nodded her bowed head slowly.

Alex rolled up his sleeves and bent down beside her chair to look at her.

"It's okay to run away from home but it's not okay to put yourself in a dangerous situation like that"

he said.

Not long after, the man who had met Alex with the van came up to him and whispered something in his ears.

Millie's breath hitched as the man in black leaned into Alex's ear and muttered something too low for her to hear. Alex's expression changed almost instantly-his jaw tightened, his brow furrowed. The shift in his demeanor was subtle, but it was enough to make Millie's stomach twist.

Alex gave a quick nod, then dismissed the man with a flick of his fingers. The man disappeared back into the shadows of the warehouse, leaving only the fading echo of his boots against concrete.

Millie clutched the arms of the chair, her heart pounding. "What... what did he say?"

Alex didn't answer at first. He stood, ran a hand through his dark hair, and exhaled.

"He said we might have a problem."

Millie's voice trembled. "What kind of problem?"

Alex turned his eyes back to her. "The kind that's looking for you."

Her chest tightened. Was it Dan?

"Worse," he muttered.

Millie's breath stilled. "Worse how?"

Alex didn't reply. Instead, he stepped toward the desk and opened the top drawer, pulling out a small first aid kit. He knelt beside her again, unscrewing a bottle of antiseptic.

"Your knees are bleeding," he said quietly.

Millie looked down. She hadn't even noticed-scratches lined her legs from her fall in the alley. Her tights were torn at the knees, dried blood crusted around the edges.

"You don't have to do that," she whispered, her voice barely audible.

"I know."

Still, he poured the antiseptic onto a cotton pad and pressed it gently to her skin. Millie winced but didn't pull away. His touch was surprisingly careful, like he'd done this before-like underneath the threat and power he exuded, he knew how to take care of broken things.

After a moment, she found herself watching him more closely. His hands were scarred in places. His knuckles looked like they'd met too many jaws. There was a jagged mark on his forearm, half-faded but still visible.

"What happened there?" she asked, nodding toward the scar.

Alex glanced down and gave a humorless smile. "A lesson I didn't learn the first time."

Millie swallowed hard. "Why are you helping me?"

He met her eyes. "Because no one else did."

Silence fell between them but it wasn't empty.

Just as she was beginning to feel the first hint of safety in Alex's territory since she left her house, the overhead light flickered again. Once. Then twice. Then off entirely.

Darkness swallowed the room.

Millie's heart jumped. "Is it the power?"

Alex stood up immediately. "Stay in the chair."

He reached for the gun holstered at his back. Millie didn't even realize he had one until she saw it gleam in the moonlight streaming through the warehouse window.

"What's happening?" she whispered.

"Quiet," he said.

His tone wasn't cruel-it was protective. Focused.

The metal pipes that littered the warehouse creaked somewhere overhead. Footsteps. Not Alex's. Not the man who whispered to him earlier. It was someone else. They.