Chapter 10: What a Coincidence

Felix POV:

‘What the hell is he doing here? In Finland. In this exact building. In this exact elevator, on this exact floor, at this exact time.’

None of it made sense. None of it was supposed to make sense, because coincidences this precise didn't exist outside of badly written thrillers, and I refused to believe I'd somehow stumbled into one.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck, this can't be happening to me right now. 

The words looped in my head on repeat, fast and useless, drowning out the quiet hum of the elevator around us. My mind kept circling back to the same impossible math.  

Venice to Helsinki, a city he had no business knowing about. And even if he somehow had legitimate business in this city, why here, this wasn't some landmark penthouse people just happened to end up in. It was quiet, unremarkable, deliberately forgettable. Nobody wandered into this building by accident. And yet here he was, standing three feet away like the distance meant absolutely nothing at all.

Renato stood there, hands in his pockets, gaze fixed somewhere ahead like he had absolutely nowhere better to be and no interest in filling the silence.

He didn't say anything.

That was somehow worse than if he had.

I stared straight ahead too, jaw tight, bags clutched against my chest like a shield. The elevator felt smaller than it had any right to be, the air between us thick with everything neither of us was saying. I could feel him beside me without even looking that specific, maddening awareness of a body standing close enough to touch, close enough that I remembered exactly what his hands had felt like once, exactly how he'd sounded saying my name in the dark.

I hated that I remembered any of it right now.

My eyes drifted sideways once, just barely, catching the line of his jaw, the easy way he held himself like stillness cost him nothing. I looked away before he could catch me at it. Looked back a second later anyway, some traitorous part of me unable to help it, and this time his eyes were already on me, unreadable, patient.

I snapped my gaze forward, heart doing something entirely unreasonable, cheeks warmer than the temperature in this elevator justified.

Coincidence didn't stretch this far. Coincidence didn't follow someone across an ocean and land him in the same elevator on the same afternoon.

The floor numbers ticked upward, slow and mechanical, each one feeling longer than it should have. I kept my eyes fixed on the little glowing display, refusing to let them wander his way again, even as every nerve in my body seemed to know exactly where he was standing without needing to look.

Finally, the doors slid open on my floor.

I stepped out fast, some instinct telling me to put distance between us before my brain could fully process what was happening. I made it two steps down the hallway before I heard him step out behind me.

I turned, half expecting him to follow me all the way to my door.

He didn't.

He walked the opposite direction, unhurried, and stopped in front of a door directly across from mine.

My stomach dropped.

I watched, frozen, as he pulled a key from his pocket, unlocked it, and stepped inside without so much as a glance back in my direction. The door clicked shut behind him, quiet and final, like he'd just confirmed something I desperately didn't want confirmed.

Same floor.

Same building.

I stood there a moment longer, bags digging into my arms, brain refusing to fully catch up with what I'd just watched happen. Then I moved, fumbling my own key into the lock with hands that weren't as steady as I wanted them to be, and let myself in.

I dropped everything just inside the door and leaned back against it, letting the weight of my own body hold it shut, like that was somehow going to keep the rest of the world out too.

‘Fuck! This can't be happening right now.’

I pushed off the door and made it three steps into the living room before I sat down hard on the couch, elbows on my knees, head in my hands. Then, almost immediately, I stood back up, because sitting felt wrong too, like my body couldn't decide whether it wanted to run or collapse. I walked to the window, looked out at absolutely nothing useful, and sat back down two seconds later when my legs decided walking around wasn't helping either.

Why the same floor. Why this building, this city, this exact elevator at this exact time. None of it added up to coincidence, no matter how many times I ran the numbers.

I stood up again.

‘Okay. Why am I even reacting like this.’

It was a fair question, one I didn't actually have a good answer for. People ran into people. Buildings existed. Elevators existed. None of this should have been enough to leave me pacing my own living room like a man three seconds from losing his mind.

Except it wasn't just people. It was ‘him’. The one person I hadn't planned on ever seeing again, standing across the hall like the universe had personally decided my clean escape wasn't allowed to stay clean.

I sat back down, dragged both hands down my face, and groaned into my palms.

‘It's fine. It's a coincidence. Weird things happen.’

Somewhere underneath that thought, quieter, uglier, and infinitely more honest, something else stirred, a small, smug voice I recognized immediately as the same one that had gotten me into this entire mess in the first place.

‘Or maybe,’ it whispered, ‘It's because he's hot, and he popped your cherry, and some stupid, reckless part of you has been thinking about him since that morning in his kitchen.’

"Oh, shut up," I said out loud, to absolutely no one, my own voice sounding ridiculous in the empty apartment.

‘Maybe you just liked how he felt.’ The thought kept going anyway, unbothered by my protest, dragging up memories I'd been actively trying not to touch since the moment I woke up sore and mortified in his bed. ‘Maybe that's why your stomach did that stupid little flip in the elevator when he looked at you.’

"I hate you," I muttered, apparently now arguing with my own subconscious like that was a normal, healthy way to process anything.

I stood up one more time, if only to physically distance myself from the thought, and ended up right back at the window, staring at nothing, jaw tight, pulse still not fully settled from the elevator ride.

‘Fuck. This can't be happening to me.’

Of all the men, in all the cities, on all the floors of all the random buildings in the world, it had to be him. Standing directly across the hall. Probably unpacking right now, probably completely unbothered, probably not currently spiraling on his own couch trying to convince himself this was a coincidence and simultaneously failing to convince himself of anything at all.

I dropped back onto the couch, finally staying seated this time, and let my head fall back against the cushions, eyes closed, breathing slowly in a way that didn't actually calm anything down.

Coincidence didn't stretch this far. Coincidence didn't follow someone across an ocean and land him directly across the hall.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling, feeling more unsettled than I had since the dock and somewhere beneath the unease, buried under every rational alarm bell currently going off in my head, something warmer and far more inconvenient than fear.

——

Renato POV:

The jet had landed just after dawn, gray Helsinki light bleeding thin through the clouds as we touched down.

My phone rang before I'd even cleared the tarmac.

‘Grandfather’

"Hello"

"There's a shipment being rerouted this week, and the man overseeing it on our end has gotten sloppy. I need someone reliable to check on it. I was going to send Marco, but—"

"Where's the shipment headed?"

"Helsinki."

I stopped walking. A slow smile pulled at my mouth despite myself.

"What a coincidence," I said. "I happen to already be here."

"You're in Finland?"

"As of about four minutes ago."

A pause on the other end, the particular silence of a man deciding whether to ask why. He didn't. "Then handle it. Quietly."

"Consider it done."

I ended the call and stood there a moment on the tarmac, cigarette between two fingers, taking a long, slow drag. 

The old man had no idea he'd just handed me the perfect excuse to be exactly where I already intended to be. Two birds. One very convenient continent.

I'd spent the flight over running through exactly how I wanted this to go, not aggressive or obvious, nothing that would send him running twice in one week.

Patience. I'd learned patience the hard way, over years of getting everything else the moment I wanted it.

I found him easily enough once I landed properly. My men had confirmed the building, the floor, even the shop he'd wandered into that morning looking distinctly out of place among racks of clothes clearly meant for people who lived quieter lives than his. 

I watched from a distance as he made his way through the city, doing something almost painfully ordinary buying sheets, groceries, the small domestic things a person bought when they were trying to convince themselves a place was actually home.

It suited him. The quiet normalcy of it, even if it was temporary or borrowed.

I timed the elevator carefully, letting him step in first, letting the doors stay open just long enough for me to slide through before they closed.

The look on his face when he saw me had been worth every hour of that flight.

I said nothing on the ride up, watching him from the corner of my eye instead, watching the tension coil tighter in his shoulders with every floor we climbed. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, refusing to look at me directly, but I caught the small, sideways glances anyway quick, darting, gone before he thought I'd notice.

I'd noticed everything about him since the first night he came stumbling to my door, reeking of alcohol.

When the doors opened on his floor, I let him step out first, let him believe for exactly three seconds that he'd successfully escaped whatever this was.

Then I stepped out behind him and walked, deliberately unhurried, toward the door directly across from his.

I felt his eyes on my back the entire way.

I unlocked my door, stepped inside, and let it close behind me before I allowed myself to smile properly.

The apartment was quiet, clean, exactly as arranged a mirror image of the one across the hall, right down to the view. I'd made sure of that particular detail personally.

I crossed the room, loosening my tie with one hand, the quiet satisfaction of the last twenty minutes still settling warm in my chest.

‘Now, how do I make my little groom fall in love with me.’

I could not help but smile at the thought of the Luciano family's prodigy child, sharp enough to run circles around anyone who underestimated him, and yet here he was, three feet from panic over a coincidence I'd engineered down to the second. It was almost too easy. Almost.

He didn't know yet. Not about the marriage, not about the file with his name on it. As far as he was concerned, I was still just the stranger from across the hall.

Let him believe that a little longer.

I thought about how long it would take him to knock on my door instead of the other way around. Not long, I suspected.  

He was too curious for his own good, too sharp not to eventually need answers more than he needed distance. Men like him didn't run from questions. They chased them down, even when chasing meant walking straight toward the one thing they should have been avoiding.

‘This is going to be fun.'

I let out a low, slow laugh as I made my way toward the bathroom, tie sliding free in my hand, the sound rich and unhurried, echoing softly off the high ceilings.