Twelve

ARIANA 

My hand was still hovering near the door handle.

I couldn't move.

The wood beside my fingers had been shattered, and the smell of burnt dust clung to the air. My ears rang so loudly that for a moment, I couldn't tell whether the footsteps coming down the corridor were real or something my mind had invented.

Then came another step.

Slow.

Unhurried.

Someone was still here.. Coming from the far side of the room. He wasn't moving like someone hunting. He was moving like someone who'd already decided how this ended and was taking his time.

A flick.

The small flame of a lighter cut the dark. It lit his face from below — jaw, cheekbone, eyes. The same face from the main hall. Plain suit. Clean-cut hair.

He was smiling.

"Didn't know the son of the high and mighty De Luca dug through death for a spy."

His voice was calm. Not mocking. Just stating something the way you'd state the weather.

I stayed against the wall. My mouth was dry.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He tilted his head.

"You don't."

"No."

He looked at me for a moment. Then he closed the lighter. The dark came back, and his voice came with it — low, even, from somewhere in front of me.

"Those kinds of manners will get you killed faster than the watch you stole."

My blood went cold.

The watch.

Nobody knew about the watch. Nobody except Jack, John, and Angela.

"Who are you?" I said.

The lighter flicked again. He was closer now — two steps, maybe three — close enough that I could see the shape of him, the calm in his shoulders, the way he held the flame like it belonged to him.

He raised his free hand. Swiped it through the air once — slow, dismissive, like he was clearing smoke.

"I've been watching this family for a long time," he said. "You're new. That makes you interesting."

He started to say something else.

Then the door opened behind me.

Light spilled into the room.

"D.D." My voice came out thin.

He stood in the doorway, one hand on the frame, eyes moving past me into the dark.

"Who were you talking to?"

I turned around.

The room was empty. The desk. The two chairs. The window with the curtain drawn. No lighter. No man. Nothing.

The second door on the far wall was open. Just slightly. Just enough.

I looked back at D.D.

He was already staring at it.

—

ARIANA 

I couldn't stop shaking.

It started in my hands and moved up. By the time I stepped into the corridor, my whole body was doing it — small, steady tremors I couldn't will away. My teeth were chattering. I pressed my lips together to hide it.

D.D. was still holding the doorframe.

"What happened?"

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out the first time. I tried again.

"There was a man. He was in the room. He knew things he shouldn't know. He knew about the watch. He knew about—"

My voice cracked. I stopped.

D.D. didn't ask anything else. He stepped forward and pulled me into him.

It happened fast. One arm around my back, the other against the back of my head. Not gentle — solid. Like he was holding me together because I'd already started to come apart.

I froze.

For two full seconds I didn't move. I didn't breathe. My hands stayed at my sides. Nobody had held me like this in years — not like this, not with both arms, not like I was something worth keeping in one piece.

Then I broke.

My fingers curled into his shirt. I pressed my face into his chest and clung. I hated it. I hated how much I needed it. But my body had already decided, and I wasn't strong enough to argue with it.

"Just breathe," he said. Quiet. Against my hair. "Breathe."

I did.

Then I heard footsteps.

Not D.D.'s. Not mine. Someone else's. Slow. Measured. Coming down the corridor.

I lifted my head.

Jack was standing at the far end of the hall.

He wasn't moving. He wasn't blinking. He was just looking at us — at me, with my hands fisted in D.D.'s shirt, at D.D., with his arms wrapped around me like he'd been doing it for years.

His face didn't change.

That was worse.

He walked toward us. Each step slow and even, the way he moved when he was deciding something.

"What's going on?"

His voice was flat. Not loud. Not angry. Just flat.

I stepped back from D.D. instantly. My hands came off his shirt. I smoothed my dress down. Wiped my face. D.D. adjusted his cuffs, then his collar, then his jacket — small movements, unbothered, like he hadn't just been holding his boss's wife in a hallway.

"We're not the only ones here," D.D. said.

Jack looked at him.

Then at me.

Then at the open door behind us, and the dark room beyond it, and the splintered hole in the wood by the handle that I'd almost forgotten was there.

Nobody said anything.

The party kept going somewhere behind us — music, laughter, glasses. Normal sounds. Ordinary sounds. Like none of this was happening.

Jack's eyes came back to me.

They stayed there.