POV Mara
I caught Adrian in Sera's hallway, my hand finding his arm before thought could form. "What happened? What's so urgent that we—"
He didn't slow, just flipped his phone toward me, the screen's glow painting my face in blues and whites. A building burned in an endless loop, flames licking out windows like desperate tongues, and smoke billowing into a night sky.
"What's on fire?" The question came out steady, but my pulse was already racing, that familiar dread pooling in my stomach like mercury.
He stopped so abruptly I nearly collided with his back, his hand finding my waist to steady me—the same gesture from the café, that day when everything was lies and possibility.
It felt as if the memory brushed against me, heat flooding through me before I could armor against it. I shoved it down, locked it away with all the other dangerous wants that kept trying to surface around Adrian.
"The safehouse," he said, voice flat with the specific calm of crisis management. "The place I used to hide you. Someone found it, torched it. Plans change—we're going to my penthouse."
"Who found it?" Shock spiked through my voice, my mind already cataloging possibilities, threats, the narrowing circle of safety. "How did they even—"
"I don't know yet." The admission cost him something; I could see it in the tightness around his eyes, the way his jaw worked like he was chewing failure. "But standing here discussing it won't give us answers."
"Going to your actual home? That's a stupid move, Adrian. They could be watching—"
"The best place to hide is in plain sight," he said, already moving again, pulling me into motion with that gravitational certainty he carried. "Old family creed. Sometimes the obvious choice is the safest because no one believes you'd be that brazen."
The BMW waited at the curb. He opened the passenger door, and something reckless rose in my throat.
"Can I ride in your lap again?" The words escaped before I could catch them, hanging in the air like an admission of every inappropriate thought I'd been fighting. "Like last time, when we were escaping?"
He looked at me with something that wasn't quite impatience but close—danger and urgency making his eyes darker, sharper. "Get in the car, Mara. We need to move."
Heat flooded my face as I slid into the passenger seat, blaming the wine for the suggestion, for the way my body had remembered fitting against his, for the traitorous disappointment that he'd said no. "Sorry. I shouldn't have—"
"It's fine." He was already pulling into traffic, movements efficient and controlled.
The silence stretched between us, the city blurring past in streams of light. I could feel him glancing over, those quick assessments he thought I didn't notice.
"Have you been crying?" The question came soft, unexpected, cutting through my defenses before I could raise them.
The evidence was probably written all over my face—puffy eyes. But I wasn't ready to give him that, wasn't ready to admit how completely I'd shattered in my best friend's arms, how the grief had finally found its way out through my carefully maintained control.
He didn't deserve to see that vulnerability, not when his texts might have been the dominos that started my parents' execution.
I turned toward the window, letting the silence answer for me.
He didn't push, didn't insist on emotional excavation. Just drove while I sat with the weight of everything I couldn't say—about crying until I couldn't breathe, about the way grief had teeth, about how I wanted to crawl into his lap not for old times but because his body against mine was the only thing that made me feel tethered to earth anymore.
"The cameras on your route to Sera's are already handled," he said as we neared his building, voice shifting back to logistics. "Same with our path here. My hacker made sure we're ghosts in the city's eyes tonight."
"Impressive control," I said, and meant it more than I'd let him see. The thoroughness of it, the way he'd anticipated and eliminated threats before they could form—it was the kind of competence that made my body respond in ways that had nothing to do with safety.
The lobby of his building was all hushed wealth and polished marble. The elevator ride was wordless, the confined space making me hyperaware of his breathing, of the way he stood close enough that I could feel his heat but not close enough to touch.
"I love this place," he said as the elevator climbed toward his floor. "Try not to judge me as just another rich jerk with a tower view."
"The judgment's already in," I said, finding that edge of banter that felt safer than sincerity. "Rich jerk with a tower view and a guilty conscience."
The elevator opened directly into his penthouse, and my mouth actually parted before I could stop it.
Clean lines and dark wood created a masculine space that somehow managed warmth—leather and steel and glass balanced with textures that invited touch, books that looked read rather than decorative.
It was him, I realized—controlled surface hiding depths I kept discovering against my will.
"Is there a red room?" I asked, the question slipping out with more suggestion than intended, my mind already painting dangerous scenarios.
"I can find one if required," he murmured, and I could hear the smile in his voice even as I fought my own, this ridiculous flirtation in the middle of catastrophe.
"Drink?" he asked, moving toward what was clearly a well-stocked bar.
"Should we be drinking?" I countered, even as my body craved the numbing edge of alcohol.
"If dawn never comes, we'll regret the drinks we didn't have more than the ones we did."
The fatalism of it, delivered with that matter-of-fact certainty, decided me. "Red wine then."
He gestured toward the living room while he worked with bottles and glasses, the domestic ritual of it making something ache in my chest. I folded onto the wide sofa, tucking my legs beneath me like I could make myself smaller, less dangerous, less hungry for things I couldn't have.
I waited, wrapped in expensive leather and dangerous proximity, for him to hand me wine and the next piece of our shared damnation.