POV Mara
Adrian returned with an uncorked bottle of Cabernet and a single glass. The wine poured dark, and I watched his hands work with a focus that had nothing to do with the vintage and everything to do with avoiding the way those same hands could lift me, stead me, almost touch me in ways that would have unraveled everything I was trying to hold together.
"I'm going to change, pour myself something stronger," he said, already moving toward what I assumed was his bedroom. "Make yourself comfortable."
Comfortable.
As if I could ever be comfortable in this space that smelled like him, that held his books and his silences and probably the ghost of every woman who'd been here before me.
The wine tasted expensive and bitter, coating my throat with tannins and the specific loneliness of drinking alone while someone changed in the next room, shedding the armor of expensive suits for something more dangerous—the vulnerability of being himself.
When he returned, my body forgot how to swallow mid-sip.
The T-shirt clung to him, soft cotton outlining the body I'd only glimpsed before, and joggers that hung low enough to reveal that sharp V of muscle that disappeared beneath fabric I suddenly wanted to remove with my teeth.
Barefoot, he looked younger, less calculated, more like someone I could have met in a different life where my parents were alive and my hands weren't stained with violence that matched his.
He chose a cushion deliberately distant, the space between us measured and intentional, setting a bottle of whiskey and a single tumbler on the coffee table like drawing a line I wasn't supposed to cross.
The distance hurt more than proximity would have.
"What do we do next?" I asked the skyline, pretending the city lights were more interesting than the way his shirt shifted when he leaned forward to pour amber medicine into his glass.
"You can look at me directly if you want," he said, voice absent of mockery, just stating a fact like he'd noticed my peripheral surveillance and decided to name it. "I don't mind."
"I'm not looking at anything," I lied, then immediately turned to study him properly because denial was exhausting and he'd already seen through me anyway.
The bruises I'd given him had changed color to yellow, and the sight of them sent something hot and possessive through my chest—mine, my marks, my damage written on his skin like a signature.
"Strategy-wise, we need to move carefully," he said, taking a pull of whiskey that made his throat work in a way that had me pressing my thighs together. "But there's something underneath all this you should know."
He set the glass down, and his eyes found mine with that specific weight of confession. "I'd already suspected someone inside Mare Nero orchestrated the conditions for Hannah's death."
Hannah. His girlfriend. The ghost between us who'd died for the crime of loving him.
"Hannah Cole," he continued, and the way her full name fell from his lips made my stomach clench with something ugly and sharp. "Her father was legitimate—a real businessman, nothing to do with our world. The family feared she'd pull me out, make me soft, maybe expose things accidentally through pillow talk or naive questions."
The wine soured in my mouth. I forced out the expected sympathy, the words tasting like ash. "I'm sorry that happened to you."
His laugh was single and bitter, cutting through my performance.
"Don't. You don't mean it and we both know why. Right now you're using me, Mara. My guilt, my resources, my need to fix this. We can be honest about that at least."
The accusation sliced something open in my chest, and fury rushed to fill the wound.
"You want honesty? If Hannah hadn't died, if you hadn't started your little revenge operation, the dominoes that framed me might never have fallen. My parents might still be breathing. So forgive me if I can't muster genuine sympathy for your loss when it directly caused mine."
He absorbed it without flinching, just nodded slowly like I'd confirmed something he already knew. Then his expression shifted, something gentler surfacing.
"You're right. I'm responsible for the chain of events. I'm sorry about your parents, Mara. Genuinely, completely sorry."
The sincerity in it, the way he held my gaze while taking ownership of the horror he'd helped create—God help me, I believed him. And that belief enraged me more than any lie could have.
"There's one more thing," he said, and I braced for emotional excavation, for him to probe the wounds we'd just exposed.
Instead: "I've never met my handler."
The words hung between us, rewriting everything I thought I understood.
"What?" I actually laughed, the absurdity of it cutting through my anger. "You've been feeding intel to a ghost for two years? How could you trust someone you've never seen?"
"Mutual protection," he said, refilling his whiskey. "Distance kept us both safe, or that was the theory. But it means the handler and whoever set you up could be the same person. Or connected. The callsign Orchid is our first thread to pull."
"So you fucked up too," I said, finding savage satisfaction in his miscalculation. "Good to know I'm not the only one making catastrophic trust decisions."
The corner of his mouth lifted, and we drank in companionable failure, the conversation drifting gradually toward safer shores. We talked about movies we'd never admit to loving, about food that reminded us of childhood when childhood was still something sweet.
The wine made me soft and stupid, my eyelids growing heavy as his voice washed over me, telling some story about accidentally adopting three cats in one week.
I let myself sink into the couch, into the warmth of alcohol and unexpected normalcy, into the dangerous fantasy that this was just a normal night with a beautiful man who hadn't helped destroy my life.
Sleep pulled me under gently, and I barely registered the world tilting, strong arms sliding beneath me, lifting me like I weighed nothing.
My body recognized him before my mind could surface—the scent of him, the solid warmth of his chest, the careful way he held me like something precious.
In that hazy space between dream and waking, wine and want tangling in my bloodstream, I wanted him to carry me to his bed.
Wanted him to stop being careful.
Wanted his hands to map my body the way mine had mapped his violence.
Wanted him to touch and take and keep, to make me forget everything except the weight of him, the taste of him, the specific destruction of letting him under my skin where he'd already taken residence anyway.
But he didn't. Wouldn't. The careful man with his careful distance, carrying me to safety instead of ruin, and I hated him for it almost as much as I wanted him for it.