Just like anyone who'd indulged in currently forbidden pleasures, I woke up to a sobering discovery the next day when I was leafing through the newspaper. I was eating a very late breakfast early in the afternoon, still clad in my nightgown and robe. There was an article on the second page, next to a grainy photograph of a man in profile captured in passing. One had to look closely and know him well enough to make the connection but his face had been burned into my memory from the night before that I couldn't mistake the man in the photograph to be anyone else but Brandon.

Mysterious Magnate Shuts Down Another Saloon, the title said.

The man referred to only as B. Maxfield, owner of the manufacturing giant Maxfield Industries, was described as a reclusive sort, having removed himself even further from society after the death of his father five years ago. In the last year or so, his name had been appearing on checks for sales brokered by a middleman, buying out various illegal establishments only to promptly shut them down. He was not directly linked to the Bureau of Prohibition. Instead, the paper was calling it a personal vendetta of some kind, referencing the death of his father at the hands of a mugger who'd shot him when he tried to rescue an elderly woman.

The bastard is on a mission—a suicide mission. I'll be damned if he wants my help with it.

I was all for good intentions but the world didn't look the same from where Brandon sat on his throne. It was a lot more dangerous and unforgiving. Justice appeared more in books than it did in the streets around here. I had decades of seeing it first-hand and surviving it. And if I wanted to keep surviving, the last thing I needed was Brandon's cause drawing me into a dangerous web where I could get caught.

When he reappeared at The Magnolia later that evening, smiling at no one else but me, my heart plunged into the icy depths of my stomach. It was a while before I realized that I'd held my breath until I was able to make my way to him, doing my best to be casual so to not draw attention.

"What can I get you, handsome?" I asked in the exact script I gave every male customer as I did with Brandon the night before.

This time he smiled at me, broad and bright that the transformation of his face caught me off guard. The smile softened the sharp lines and planes of his profile and lit up those burnished gold-green eyes.

What's that? Oh. The sound of my heart leaving my body and making its way to the palm of his hand.

"Is there somewhere private I can secure and enjoy the exclusive use of your company this evening?" he asked, those same hypnotic eyes sparkling with humor I would've never imagined he possessed the night before.

But he's just as full of himself, isn't he?

I arched a brow. "Yes, there is. You can find it if you go straight through the back and up the spiral staircase. It opens to the back alley where the garbage is. You'll find yourself right at home there after I toss you out on your condescending ass which I hope gets bruised."

Brandon leaned forward, his small chuckle low and husky. "You're not helping matters here by making me want kiss that tart mouth of yours, Charlotte. I just want to be alone with you. I assumed the accommodations I implied are available here."

I gave his toe a discreet kick. He may be right but he could be subtle with it. "This is a saloon, not a brothel."

"Doesn't mean paid pleasures don't exist here," he answered quickly, the light in his eyes flaring with anger. "I've been to enough of these places to know."

"Speaking of that, you and I need to have a serious conversation about your heroics," I said, lowering my voice. "Wait for me at my place. Take the fire escape and stay there. I'll meet you in a hour. I predict I will be quite sick that I just can't continue working tonight."

Brandon didn't say anything for a moment. He just gazed at me like a man about to put the last pieces of the puzzle together—a little awed, thrilled, wary.

He picked up his hat and rose to his feet. He threw a couple of bills on the table and tipped his hat at me. Just before he turned to leave, he said gently, "You will not regret trusting me."

No, I won't. But I'll regret loving you.

Too fast, some might say, but I've been running for so long that it took no time to recognize the one thing I've been running from my whole life.

Out of nowhere, Cyrus appeared in front of me, looking concerned. "Was that man bothering you?"

"I handled it," I said lightly before shouldering past him. Cyrus was mostly brawn than brains but he was dogged when he was onto something.

"Just the girl I wanted to see," a loud, over-cheerful voice came from the entrance and I stopped to look.

East End Eddie—mob boss, distant cousin to the notorious Bernsteins of the Purple Gang, and the biggest bootlegger in this side of town.

He didn't own The Magnolia but he might as well because he had it well under his thumb. We were his biggest customer around here—our business important enough for him to retire Big Joe, the owner, out of existence when he started dealing with a different supplier. Rosie, Big Joe's wife, promised not to go to anyone else for supplies and keep giving him a tidy cut of profits for his 'protection'. Ironic really since the protection we needed the most was from him. Controlling the supply and demand was the only way to own the world, after all—or at least his slice of hell.

Eddie wasn't much to look at—average height and build and if dissipation hadn't gotten to his face first, he would've looked the youthful thirty-something that he was. He didn't know that though. Or maybe he did but the thing about people who thought they owned the world was that they thought they owned the people in it too.

"Evenin', Eddie," I said through a stiff smile, easily stepping aside when he tried to hook an arm around my waist. "You know where your table is. I'll bring you and your boys your usual."

I started moving, hoping to shake him off my trail as quickly as possible but he caught up with me just as I approached the kitchen. He gripped my arm firmly enough to lock me in place, not so gently turning me around to face him.

"Sweetheart, you know there's no use playing hard to get, right?" he said, smiling and flashing me a chipped front tooth."I've had my eyes on you for a good long while. I'm getting impatient."

I tried to twist my arm away, ignoring the way his fingers dug painfully into my flesh. "Then tear your eyes out because that would be your only relief. Or throw yourself off a cliff. I'm not particular about how you choose to be miserable. You'll do a fantastic job of it all on your own."

Eddie had probably put more bodies in the ground than the local undertaker but I couldn't give him the very thing he could control me with like a puppet on a string—fear. There were bigger, more terrifying things in my life than his petulance.

He roughly grabbed me by the chin, pinching my jaw so hard I would probably have bruises.

"There will come a time when you'll give me exactly what I want, Charlotte," he sneered, his stale breath hitting me right on the face. "You're no better than the rest of us and when you're pinned down under me, stripped of your clothes and stupid pride, you'll know exactly what you're worth."

I met his gaze steadily, smiling just a little because it felt so good to fight back. "I'll be worth the weight of your head after I remove it from your body with a dull and rusty knife. I'll put it on a pike out in the park and happily collect payment from those who'll benefit from my noble civil service."

And with that, I gave him a hard shove, throwing all my weight into it until he released me and stumbled back.

I marched away, head high, and searched Rosie out to tell her that I needed to leave. Rosie had never been the same since her husband's death six months ago. She mostly just stared into space now. It was a stark reminder of why I needed distance. I didn't want to care for anyone I would have to watch die, left behind with nothing but the pain of it.

On my walk home, I never once loosened my grip on the pistol on my leg, acutely aware of the hole I'd dug for myself in some scrubland somewhere after provoking Eddie.

I was no pushover but I always tried to steer clear of Eddie.

But tonight, I felt almost reckless.

Why now?

Because you know a hero and courage is infectious.

My apartment was dark when I got in through the front door. Turning a lamp on, I slipped off my shoes and walked to the back window where the fire escape was, my stockinged feet pattering lightly on the floor as I tried not to run.

I wasn't really sure at first who I was looking for—a fallen angel, a doomed hero, a dashing prince.

Brandon Maxfield was none of them exactly but all of them somehow.

Come in," I said, stepping aside to give him room to climb inside.

"You know the risks you're taking by inviting me into your life yet you still do it," he murmured as he slipped over the window sill with limbering grace for someone his height and size.

"If there's anyone with everything to lose, it's you," I said. "My life might as well be meaningless compared to yours."

Brandon came to stand in front of me, his fingers gently tilting my chin up. "Your life is not meaningless, Charlotte. You just haven't lived it yet to the fullest."

This tender gesture—a stark contrast to Eddie's rough handling earlier—did something to me that for the first time in so many years, I felt tears prick the back of my eyes.

"Some of us can't afford to live life to the fullest, Brandon. Sometimes, all we can do is just live," I said, closing my eyes briefly and turning my face to touch my cheek to his palm.

"It's not enough to just live, Charlotte," he said firmly, his free arm wrapping lightly around my waist to bring me closer to him. "We have to live for something."

The hardened tone in his voice prodded at my memory and I sharply looked up.

"And so you live for revenge," I said. "You punish your father's murderer with every criminal you send to prison."

The fury in his eyes was hard to miss. And so was the sudden tension radiating from his body. "I'm honoring his life by trying to make this world he believed in a better place."

"I don't think your father would be honored to have you die for him," I said.

"We'll all die someday," he replied solemnly. "The difference is in what we die for."

I took a painful step back, forcing my gaze away from him. "Then you should go because I can't watch you do it. I've seen enough death in my life to sit in the front row for yours. Because that's the fate waiting for you in The Magnolia if you continue this crusade."

I felt him come up behind me, not touching me but standing near enough for me to feel his warmth. "I'm not asking you to help, Charlotte. I won't ask you to risk your life for me like that."

I glanced at him, letting out a brittle, humorless laugh. "Why would you trust me in the first place? Have you ever considered that I might be helping the other side?"

His face showed no uncertainty. "I have because it's foolish for me not to take all possibilities into consideration. But I trust you."

"Why?"

"Because you're too strong to be corrupted and too brave to turn your back to the truth," he murmured, a soft smile on his face. "You see this world differently and that gives me hope."

I wasn't really sure then how I saw the world—perhaps a little brighter than I'd seen it all my life—but I certainly knew how I would see it in the years to come.

Brandon didn't have to ask me to help with his crusade.

I was already there with him because whatever other choice I had he took away the moment he gathered me in his arms and kissed me that night.

He gave me something equally wonderful and terrifying at the same time—no, not something to live for but something, someone, to die for.

The next two weeks stretched on forever—a catch in time, an alteration of our destinies that would start, or perhaps continue, our entangled lives.

It required some suspension of belief—at least on my part, no matter how ironic that may be. A dark, dashing prince had never been in the books for me but that was what Brandon Maxfield had quickly become.

He'd shown up in the saloon a few times, with several days in between visits. Like always, he came alone and he didn't stay long.

But each night, he waited in the shadows to guard my way home before spending hours with me in my cramped apartment until the sun lit up the skies.

Many of those hours started with quiet conversations—as interesting as they could be between two people from the opposite ends of the world. It was a tremendous risk to let down some of my walls and at times, I would tell myself it was the sheer novelty of it that held me captive. I haven't let anyone come close in a lifetime that I was hungering for it. It offered little reassurance because a starved animal would often turn wild and desperate and get itself killed. But even knowing that, I couldn't hold back and Brandon couldn't either.

Without saying it out loud, we somehow knew that we were merely trying to keep up with something that was spinning fast out of our control.

It was an impossible romance but to deny that something was happening was futile. We felt it in the way we said each other's name—familiar but yearning. We felt it in our combined heartbeats that filled the room when we spoke no words. We felt it in the way our bodies moved—always looking for contact and instinctively finding it.

I'd never been with a man because by the time I was old enough to understand human intimacies, I was already on the run. There was no one I thought could understand, no one I could trust. I was a woman who always had to look over her shoulder and the years have made me vigilant and distrustful.

But I knew somehow that Brandon was different. Maybe a lifetime of knowing people's talent at hurting others made me recognize the exact opposite of it in Brandon. He had quiet, solid strength about him, a sense of nobility, an innate instinct to protect and cherish—everything I was yet to find in anyone after all this time. Sometimes, a sharp reminder that none of it could ever be mine would hit me but the intoxication that was Brandon Maxfield was proving harder and harder to fight.

When he would murmur how beautiful I was to him, touching my cheek as if he had to discover the truth of his statement all over again, I couldn't summon my shield up. Maybe it had something to do with all the times I'd watched him laugh these past several nights, looking nothing like the sullen man I first met, or the way his eyes would soften whenever I leaned close to him or laced my fingers through his.

Whatever it was, I couldn't quite give it up just yet, even as the risk grew.

The one man who knew my secret was the same man I was hopelessly and helplessly drawn to.

"The first night I saw you, you looked so much like the woman in the painting that I had no question in my mind," he said one night, after we slow-danced in the moonlight without music, and Brandon still held me long after our feet had stopped moving.

I fought the urge to stiffen in his arms and schooled my expression to show no panic.

"It was at the same time a treasure and a travesty," he continued, lifting to brush a stray lock of hair off my face. "A treasure because the woman in the painting—a reminder of all that's good and pure—had been my only company when I sat in my study every evening in the last five years. To think, even for a few insane moments, that she was real and within my reach, gave me some hope. A travesty because if she's indeed real, and she's you, then her fate in the this world is no better than the one she must've endured before she posed for that painting. I couldn't spare her then and I might still not be able to spare her now."

Emotions felt thick and suffocating in my throat and I swallowed hard, slowly lifting my gaze back to him and looking him in the eye. "Why, Brand? What terrible fate did she suffer?"

His face was stone cold and wintry as he answered, "Cruelty. Abuse."

Wrong. A more terrible fate I suffer is a very long lifetime of being alone.

I forced a brave smile for him. "Then I guess it's lucky that I'm not the woman in the painting. She could've been anyone. Blond hair and blue eyes aren't all that rare in this side of the world, you know?"

I held his gaze, refusing to look away and rouse even more of his suspicion although I knew how badly his brain must be fighting that instinct. Brandon Maxfield seemed like a rational man—passionate, yes, but he was too intelligent to dispute facts. As much as I craved to be near that smoldering fire, I prayed fervently that his cold logic would save me since I couldn't seem to exercise any logic of my own.

A slow smile melted the frown off his mouth. "As much as I'd like to meet the woman from the painting, I'm glad you're not her. I couldn't bear to imagine you going through that same kind of pain."

I didn't look away. I just closed my eyes briefly, knowing they would show too much. "It's just a damn painting, Brandon. She may have been nothing more than a figment of the artist's imagination. You grieve her way too much."

It might have been too sharp, too presumptuous, but I was getting a bit desperate.

"Real or not, I would feel the same way," he said firmly, an edge in his voice. He wasn't angry at me, surprisingly, but he was definitely angry about something. He pulled away from me, starting to pace, his hand raking through his hair.

"I'd bought that painting long before my father died," he said. "There was something about her that drew me—that mesmerizing face, that haunted smile, that feeling of near serenity you start to feel right before it punched you in the gut. The painting was hidden away in storage for a long time. When my father died, I holed up in his office every night, trying to convince myself that he wasn't really gone. But it was only a matter of time before a room he'd left warm and inviting turned into a cold, quiet prison. He was gone. He was murdered by cutthroats as he did what he'd always done for this world—saving it. He was a great man—an incredible father—but he was foolish in believing that every person was worth saving. I finally understood that and decided I was going to do something about it."

He paused, turning toward the window and leaning forward, bracing himself against the sill. With moonlight streaming in, I could see the rigid line of his frame as it held together the angry man, the grieving son and the lonely boy that Brandon was.

"I found that painting again and took it out into the light," he continued. "She became my reminder of man's capacity to destroy something so beautiful and innocent. And as ridiculous as it may sound, it seemed to me that she understood how I felt because she was evidence of that unfortunate fact."

I almost said 'I do understand' because he was right—I knew probably more than he did just how cruel the world could be to each other, having seen two wars in my lifetime, but I wasn't supposed to be the woman in the painting. I could never be her.

I stood behind him and since I had no words right at that moment, I simply wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my cheek against his muscled back, offering comfort that I suspected he'd never quite found since his father died five years ago.

I knew what lonely looked like. It was like gazing at my unchanging self in the mirror every day.

"I don't think the woman in the painting wanted you to hate the world, Brand," I murmured, finding it easier that he wasn't watching me with those brilliant, intense eyes. I still had to be careful because he never explicitly told me what was so tragic about that painting but I wanted him to understand something. "The world will never be unmarred—much like everyone who lives in it—and I'd like to think that maybe she wanted you to see what's more important than imperfection."

"And what's that?" he asked after a moment.

"The strength to bear and accept it," I said, squeezing my arms tighter around him. "Pain changes us all—like fire bending metal. No one comes out unscathed but we can come out stronger and better, and the imperfection of the world, of ourselves, won't matter as much as it did when we were weak."

Before I could take in a deep breath to clear my own chest of that weight, Brandon turned within my arms, caging me inside his own and pressing a rough kiss on my mouth.

I felt all the jagged edges of his heart, felt them cut deep and draw blood, but I didn't back away. A feat, really, when I consider the decades of life I'd spent apart from anyone, careful never to show the rugged scars of my own heart that never healed properly.

I thought that maybe I could be strong enough for this, for someone else this time, but it was starting to become clear that I couldn't.

If this was what love felt like, I didn't want any of it.

Not if all that I'd have of it was a fleeting glimpse. It would seem like a glancing blow but I suspected I would be utterly destroyed if I lost him.

In just a week's time, if things went as planned, which they haven't since Brandon's appearance, I'll be on the run again.

Nothing has changed.

Nothing is the same.

Just like me.