I had been living in the shadows for as long as I could remember. My work was always clean, precise, no room for error. I’d learned the art of taking life without hesitation, without remorse—but that was the easy part. The harder part was living with the aftermath. The weight of lives taken pressed against my chest like a physical burden, the faces of targets haunting my dreams even years later.

And then there was her—Jessica. The woman who made the darkness recede, if only temporarily. The scent of her vanilla perfume lingered in my memory long after we parted, her laugh a rare melody in my silent world. She made me believe I could be more than the sum of my victims.

She was a legend in our world. A feared professional killer whose name was whispered in awe and dread. Cold, calculating, and deadly—no one dared to question her methods. She made people vanish without a trace, leaving only rumors in her wake. To many, she was untouchable.

But to me, she was everything. Her sharp eyes saw through the carefully constructed walls I'd built around myself. She knew there was more to me than met the eye. And that terrified me more than any target I'd ever eliminated.

Here I was, sitting across from her at our usual spot in the quiet corner of a dimly lit bar. The wooden table between us held the weight of our unspoken secrets. The faint jazz music from the speakers mingled with the clink of glasses, creating a backdrop for what might be the most dangerous mission of my life.

My fingers tightened around my glass, the condensation seeping into my skin as my knuckles whitened. I needed to tell her everything before I asked the question burning on my lips.

"So," she said, her voice smooth and dangerous as always, cutting through the ambient noise. "What's been on your mind tonight?"

Her eyes were piercing, her expression unreadable, but I could see a flicker of something—an expectation. She had always been able to sense when something was wrong, when I was keeping something from her.

"I've been thinking... about us. About the future," I said, the words feeling foreign on my tongue.

Her gaze softened imperceptibly, but she didn't interrupt. She was waiting.

"I want to ask you something," I continued, my throat suddenly dry. "Something important."

The silence between us stretched, and my palms began to sweat. The weight of the moment bore down on me like the weight of all my past sins.

Jessica raised an eyebrow, a hint of amusement flickering in her gaze. "Go on," she said, her tone deceptively playful.

"I... I want to spend the rest of my life with you," I blurted out, then quickly tried to steady myself. "I want to marry you."

There. It was out. But even as I said the words, a new wave of panic flooded over me.

I hesitated, my voice dropping lower. "But there's something you need to know, Jess. Something I’ve kept from you. I’m not... I’m not who you think I am."