CHAPTER 4

BRANDON POV 

 The lunch meeting ended at 2:17 p.m.

 I closed the folder in front of me and stood. The three men across the private dining table rose with me.

 “It was a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Hale,” the senior partner said, extending his hand.

 “The pleasure was mutual,” I replied, shaking it once.

 The second man nodded. “We look forward to the final contracts.”

 “They’ll be with you by the end of the week.”

 The third offered a brief smile. “Thank you for your time.”

 I gave each of them a short, firm handshake and nothing more. Then I turned and walked toward the doors.

 Remington was already waiting just outside the private dining room.

 He was thirty-four, tall, and always precisely dressed in a dark suit that never showed a wrinkle. He had been my personal assistant since the second year I spent in Seoul. He spoke only when necessary, anticipated what I needed before I asked for it, and had never once offered an opinion I had not requested. In the years we had worked together he had learned to read the smallest shift in my schedule or my silence. He held my coat over one arm and the slim leather document case in the other. The moment he saw me step out, he moved forward, held the coat open, and helped me into it before falling into place half a step behind my right shoulder.

 We walked through the quiet corridor of the restaurant and out into the afternoon light. The black Maybach sat at the curb, engine already running. The driver opened the rear door as soon as he saw us. I slid inside. Remington followed and took the seat beside me, placing the document case neatly between us. The door closed with a heavy, expensive sound.

 “Back to the tower, Mr. Hale?” the driver asked, eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror.

 I looked out at the dense Midtown traffic for a moment. The lunch had left a restlessness under my skin that the usual return to the office would not settle.

 “No,” I said. “East 7th Street. Corner of 7th and Second Avenue.”

 There was a brief pause. The driver had been told that afternoon that we would return directly to Hale Tower. The change in destination registered in the slight tightening of his hands on the wheel, but he only answered, “Yes, sir,” and pulled into traffic.

 Remington did not ask why. He simply adjusted the document case and kept his eyes lowered to the screen of his tablet. The car moved through the shifting lanes of the city. I watched the buildings change as we left the polished glass of the financial district and entered the lower, older streets of the East Village. The light was different here—softer, broken by trees and lower rooflines. The Maybach drew more than a few glances as it slowed along the narrower avenue.

 The driver found a space along the curb almost directly across from the café. The sign above the door read **Hollow & Bean** in simple white letters. Large front windows stretched from just above the sidewalk nearly to the ceiling, giving a clear view of the entire interior. Wooden tables. Hanging plants. The slow movement of people with paper cups and open laptops. From behind the tinted glass of the Maybach the scene was perfectly visible and completely separate.

 “We’ll wait here,” I said.

 The driver kept the engine at a low idle. Remington remained silent beside me. I sat back against the leather seat and watched the sidewalk.

 Minutes passed.

 I tracked every person who approached the café door. A woman with a stroller. Two students carrying heavy bags. An older man with a newspaper tucked under one arm. None of them were who I was waiting for. The restlessness under my skin only sharpened with each passing minute.

 At the twenty-eight-minute mark I saw them.

 Killian turned the corner with his daughter’s hand in his.

 She was small, wearing a yellow backpack that looked slightly too large for her shoulders, and she was talking the way children do—animated, swinging their joined hands. Killian listened. His head was tilted slightly toward her, the same angle I still remembered from years ago when he would explain a painting idea he had not yet figured out how to put onto canvas. He looked tired around the eyes. Leaner than he had been at eighteen, but still carrying that same quiet stubbornness in the set of his mouth and the way he held his shoulders. He wore a dark jacket over a shirt that still had faint paint stains near the cuffs. The kind of clothes that had never belonged in the world I lived in and somehow still looked more real than anything in it.

 He pushed the door of the café open with his free hand and guided his daughter inside. Through the clear glass I watched him crouch slightly so she could see the pastry case. She pointed. He smiled—small, genuine, the kind of smile that had once been directed at me without hesitation—and ordered. The barista seemed to know them. Two cups were prepared without much discussion. Killian paid, took the drinks, and led his daughter to a small table near the window.

 I did not move.

 I sat in the back of the Maybach and watched every ordinary second of it. The way he tore open a sugar packet for her cup with careful fingers. The way he listened while she talked, nodding at the right moments. The way he wiped a crumb from the corner of her mouth with his thumb as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Every movement was simple. Every movement pulled something tight and old and unhealed under my ribs.

 He was still the most beautiful thing I had ever wanted.

 I stayed until Killian finally stood, gathered their empty cups, and took his daughter’s hand again. They left the café and turned the corner the same way they had come. I followed them with my eyes until they disappeared from view.

 Only then did I speak.

 “Back to the tower.”

 The driver pulled into traffic without comment. Remington still said nothing. I turned my face toward the window and watched the East Village give way to the denser streets of Midtown, the image of Killian at that small table near the glass staying clear and sharp behind my eyes the entire way.