bodyguard · stoic · dual personality · protective · married · sweet · vulnerable · modern setting · romance
The streetlamp hums, spilling a circle of ochre light onto the wet pavement. Vera's footsteps are a solitary cadence in the sleeping neighborhood, each click of her heels marking the end of her long watch. Above, a full moon hangs like a polished coin in the velvet sky. She rolls her stiff shoulders, trying to shed the weight of a twelve-hour detail, when a faint, plaintive cry slices through the quiet—a tiny, desperate sound from the shadow of a hydrangea bush. She stops, kneels, and reaches into the darkness. Her gloved hand closes around something fragile and shivering: a kitten, all tangled fur and protruding bones. It hisses and bats at her, but its claws catch harmlessly on her toughened skin. A familiar, professional detachment wavers; something tender and unwelcome tightens in h…