Delphine has noticed her life getting repetitive lately: groan herself awake, resent the dawning of a new day, embrace the all consuming dread summoned by the responsibilities that await beyond the sanctity of sheets, repeat.

So, she knew that she shouldn’t have gotten out of bed today.

If anything, that knowledge was her only constant within the monotony.

Refusing to be an accountant for her family business meant instead incurring long hours in a windowless office at the local bank.

The loathsome morning light was the only source of warmth across her increasingly pallid face.

She has seriously considered the conspiracy of secretly being a vampire, completely unbeknownst to her.

Even in her fleeting attempt at working alongside her family, which she highly recommends against, she was always scheduled to be withheld from daylight.

As a night person, she’d welcomed it.

As a person? It grew quite tiresome.

If she could get a good night’s sleep one of these days, she might actually have the energy to pursue her conspiracy theory.

Openly hissing in distain at the broken coffeemaker in the break room earlier surely lent credence to her case.

Plus, when she spun to escape, woefully empty handed, her coworker, Thad, crashed into her.

Subsequently spilling the last cup of coffee in the office, that he’d undeservedly obtained, all over her previously pristine blouse.

In lieu of an apology, she received his heated ire for spilling his drink.

Delphine decided that her desire to tear Thad’s throat out with her teeth for that, wasn’t actually vampiric at all.

After countless uncaffeinated hours assessing one of the bank’s largest accounts and coming up empty once again as to why the numbers don’t match up, she left the month long mystery behind.

Her manager simply raised a brow as she clocked out more violently than necessary.

Arriving home well after her beloved sunset that she yet again missed, she freezes in the doorway of her darkened apartment.

The potential supernatural symptom of her heightened senses piques her curiousity.

Because despite the shadows swallowing the space, she’s immediately aware that she’s not alone in her home.

Humor finds her as she steps to the left to blindly drop her keys onto the assigned tray on the table there, shedding her coat as if nothing is amiss.

She’s never had a single guest over in the past three years of living in this open floor plan space.

Of course, the first person to willingly stop by would be an intruder.

She stretches up to hang her coat.

Stale coffee from her ruined shirt wafts to her nose.

Defeat consumes her levity in an instant.

This breach of her personal space by a stranger is just another reminder of her complete lack of control over her life.

With a heavy breath, she pivots to face her apartment, overtly scanning the shadows for its unseen occupant in both challenge and plea to just get this over with.

“Delphine Taylor,” says, what might as well have been, the booming voice of God.

“Yep?” she chirps uneasily.

A figure rises on the right, a man that has apparently been waiting for her from her living room couch.

_‘Lazy_,’ she chides with a nervous laugh in her mind.

His impressive silhouette is backlit by the moonlight emanating from her large bare window, hands raised in an almost amusing portrayal of harmlessness.

“I’m just here to talk,” he hedges.

“And intrusion is conducive to conversation?” she replies before she can think better of it.

He huffs a resigned laugh at that.

“It is today,” he relents.

Delphine decides to stay silent this time, unsure of what will emerge if she opens her mouth again.

The intruder sighs before confiding in a low tone, “Look, I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but I’m here to save your life.”

_‘Who says I want to be saved?’_

The thought emerges in her mind unbidden.

A pained noise from her audience of one informs her that she’d spoken the words out loud.

The fact that his presence and proclamation trigger no alarm in her is something she’ll assess another day, she decides.

That is, if she has one.

With a helpless shrug, she informs the earnest intruder, “I think you’ve got the wrong person. I don’t ’get into’ anything.”

The featureless figure nods as though they agree, negating any relief by replying, “Then why is a Sarto sniper on the rooftop across the street, aiming into your apartment?”

_Sarto? Like the crime family? _

The man tilts his head again in silent affirmation.

Delphine feels her face contort with horror.

What could _they_ possibly want from…

Realization strikes like a hammer.

That large account she’s been looking into that just doesn’t match up.

_Of course, it’s theirs._

Resolving that she can’t inform this stranger of her discovery without knowing where his loyalty lies, she eyes the whimsical design of her space that had previously been a point of pride.

Answering instead pertaining to the purpose of the crime family’s literal sights set on her,

“Uh. They’re interior design snobs?”

The stranger only snorts slightly, kindly allowing her to process her misfortune for a moment more before interjecting.

“So, here’s what we’re going to do –”

“We?!”

Bypassing the shrill outburst, the man proposes, “I’m going to pretend to kill you.”

His words are met with thick silence rather than the applause that he’d apparently expected.

He clears his throat before barreling on.

“They can’t see me from here. So, I’ll chase you around the couch a couple times to catch their attention, then hold a knife to your throat.”

“A knife?!”

“Then, I’ll pretend to slice it, you’ll fall, then we crawl out the door. _Molto bene_,” he adds with a terrible Italian accent.

Delphine curses colorfully through a cry.

His large hands push forward as he coos soothingly, like she’s a wild animal on the verge of attacking innocents,

“No, no. It’s okay!”

“None of this is okay!” She whisper-shouts as if the sniper can be triggered by sound.

“Not your plan nor your horrible Italian.”

“My Italian isn’t horrible,” the man grumbles.

Running her hands aggressively through her hair, “Agree to disagree,” she seethes.

“I’ve already packed you a bag,” he goes on, ignoring her indignant gasp at the thought of a stranger going through her things, “just work with me here, and I’ll get you to safety.”

Delphine startles as a laugh erupts from her.

Then another.

She braces her hands on her knees as the manic laughter threatens to overtake her entirely.

Tears pour down her cheeks at the assurance that she will never be the same again, but there’s almost relief in the fact that her days won’t be either.

She finally rises and wipes her face dry, the man’s posture betraying his unease at her emotional state.

“I’m good,” she lies, “let’s do your stupid plan.”

He petulantly mumbles some childlike comeback under his breath about _her_ plan being stupid.

Delphine scoffs at her lack of one and begins to put on the performance of her life, rounding the couch and raising her hands in surprise as if she’s just discovered him.

His chuckle trails her as they circle the furniture, the promised knife extended in a twisted game of tag.

“No laughing,” she chides, “that’s not menacing.”

“Well I’m _sorry _that_ _I’m not a practiced assailant.”

“At least you have that going for you.”

He leaps over the couch and hooks his arm around her neck at that, dragging her back against his chest as he raises the blade.

The room illuminates red from the laser of the sniper’s scope.

It hadn’t seemed real to her until now.

None of this did.

But she really is willingly allowing a stranger to raise a weapon in her direction, isn’t she?

Two of them, really.

“I won’t hurt you or let The Sartos’ get to you,” he promises in her ear.

“I trust you,” she says, as his knife points to her throat.

The words are more mouthed than said aloud.

She braces, recoiling to the right before he can mimic the slice.

The whir of a bullet breezes her cheek, striking the stranger’s left shoulder with a meaty thud.

He grunts but remains otherwise unmoved.

She bends forcefully forward until momentum moves him back.

They land on her poor couch, his sustained embrace ensures that she crashes onto his lap.

After a long low noise of pain that he can’t seem to contain, he hisses, “Get down.”

She turns to look into surprisingly blue eyes, currently glazed in agony, and sighs,

“I can’t believe how bad your Italian is.”

His dark brows furrow.

“Pretty sure that was English,” he grits out.

She tuts and fights her way out of his arms.

A fight she only wins because of his injury.

He reaches up for her in anguish as she stands.

The red glow rips from the room.

She boops him on the nose.

“What’s my last name?” Delphine asks, and it feels like a test.

He swallows thickly while considering the answer at length, finally voicing, “Taylor.”

She smiles. “And what is _Taylor_ in Italian?”

The front door swings open.

Her brother, Dominic, enters, wearing his all black sniper outfit.

That impeccable timing of his grants him the perfect moment to educate, “_Sarto_.”

The hapless hero on the couch pales further: from shock, blood loss, or both, she can’t decide.

“Hey, Del,” Dominic Sarto addresses his sister casually, “Good thing I was on protection duty tonight, huh?”

His dark eyes scan her, then. Familiar yet carrying the weight of macabre knowledge best unknown.

She notes his lips twitching downward, disapproving of the stain on her shirt, like he’s aware of the source of it, before his gaze returns back to her face.

Delphine doesn’t expect to ever see Thad again.

“Thanks for the trust with that shot back there,” her brother jerks his head towards the window that he read her lips through, as if she could forget being shot at just minutes ago, “How long has it been? A year?”

“Ten,” she answers with more emotion than she’d like.

Clearing her throat, she jokes of her family’s finances that she’d been unknowingly assessing,

“I think you need a new accountant.”

Eyes widening at his hopeful expression, she amends, “Not me. Not again.”

He shrugs and lifts himself to perch on the kitchen island with a grunt.

A plate that was in his way crashes to the floor.

No one flinches.

“What are we gonna do with him?” Dominic asks with a lazy wave at the man bleeding all over her couch.

Looking down at the stain, the sight inspires no excitement in her, disappointingly dashing away her theory of being a vampire entirely.

She shrugs quickly. “I think I’ll keep him.”

Dom gives a low whistle at that.

“I’ll call the medic then. You sure?”

She reaches down and grabs the knife from the man’s weakening hand, coasting the blade up his neck like a close shave.

Using the tip under his chin to encourage his glassy stare more firmly in her direction, she smiles and nods in approval of their reversed roles.

She may exist in a consistent state of distress, but she’s no damsel.

Besides, she much prefers being the one doing the saving.

Gaze returning to her brother, she replies,

“Trust me.”