LOGINElowen's POVI didn't take Diego up on dinner.Not tonight. When you have spent years bracing for an ambush, stepping out into an open field feels less like freedom and more like walking straight into crosshairs. I had left the Tribeca loft with his invitation humming between my ribs like a live wire, the warmth of his thumb still faintly burning against the skin between my knuckles.By seven, the cab dropped me at Eighty-Eight.The November rain had turned into a steady, freezing mist that coated the high glass in sheets of blurred silver. The penthouse smelled of nothing—no sawdust, no warm beeswax, no roasting coffee beans. Just the filtered, climate-controlled silence of a home that felt more like a museum after visiting hours.Killian was in the master bedroom.He wasn't sitting behind a desk or staring at a screen. He had his jack
Elowen's POVThe silence in the penthouse had become too heavy to sit in.By noon, the rain had settled over the city, turning the river into a dull sheet of slate. The apartment felt hollowed out—a vast, immaculate expanse of glass and stone where I had nothing left to do except listen to the hum of the heating vents.I put on my coat, took the elevator down to the street, and caught a cab south.Tribeca was washed in gray. The cab tires hissed against the wet asphalt as we turned down the narrow, cobblestone side street, leaving the sharp, vertical towers of Midtown behind for low-slung brick warehouses and cast-iron fire escapes.The heavy iron door of the building clicked open with my key. Inside, the old freight elevator shuddered into motion, groaning behind the scissor gate as it hauled me up to the fourth floor.When the gate slid back, the smell of the loft hit me like a familiar pulse: dry cedar shavings, warm beeswax, roasted coffee, and the chalky dust of old plaster. Tall
Elowen's POVThe slush along Eleventh Avenue had turned the color of lead by the time I finally left the diner.The freezing November rain came down in uneven sheets, blowing off the Hudson to sting against my cheeks. I didn't hail a cab right away. I pulled my coat collar up around my throat and walked three blocks east through the gray drizzle, letting the wet cold numb the prickle of heat under my skin.Leo's words kept cadence with my boots against the wet pavement.You stayed because you made yourself my shield.Every horn that cut through the mist, every set of red brake lights reflecting off the asphalt, felt like an echo of the question I had spent nearly a year avoiding: if there was no brother in a coma, no medical bills piling up on a desk, and no five-to-fifteen-year sentence hanging over someone I loved, what was I doing in that tower?The private elevator at the lobby of Eighty-Eight didn't offer an answer. It rose with that familiar, sickening smooth ascent, the digital
Elowen's POVThe diner on Eleventh Avenue smelled of burnt grease, dish soap, and wet cardboard.Through the smudged front window, late-afternoon traffic crawled toward the Lincoln Tunnel under a sky that had turned the flat, bruised gray of dirty ice. A green canvas duffel bag sat on the scuffed linoleum between Leo’s worn work boots, zipped tight, its nylon strap frayed white at the buckle.He had a thick ceramic mug of black coffee in front of him, cooling untouched next to a greasy paper napkin. His face still had that pale, hollowed-out look from forty-eight hours in an intake cell downtown, but his eyes were sharp again—sharp with a restless, erratic energy that wouldn't let his boots sit still against the floor."Lisbon," I said, looking at the bent boarding pass sticking out of his canvas jacket pocket. "You don't know anyone in Portugal, Leo.""I know one guy," he said, turning the mug in a slow, scraping circle over the Formica. "An old logistics broker Dad used before the c
Elowen's POVThe air inside the detention center smelled like damp concrete and burnt coffee, the same heavy weight settling into my chest the second the guard buzzed me through the gate.Leo was brought into the consultation room five minutes later. He looked hollowed out, dark circles under his eyes, his knuckles red and raw from the cheap soap they used in there. He dropped into the metal chair across from me, forearms resting on the cold table."You look like hell, El," he said, trying for a smirk that never quite made it to his mouth."I spoke to Killian," I said, skipping past anything softer.The smirk disappeared. His jaw went tight, shoulders hunching like he was bracing for a hit. "I told you not to go to him.""He knows, Leo."He blinked, going completely still. "Knows what?""Everything," I said, keeping my voice low enough that it wouldn't carry through the glass. "About you and Kateryna. That she told you she was leaving him. That the two of you moved money together so y
Elowen's POVFour days slid by in a blur of cold rain and suffocating quiet.At the office, we moved around each other like two ships steering clear of the same patch of fog. No arguments, no cutting remarks over shipping schedules. Killian treated me with the same polite, careful distance he gave outside auditors, and each passing day pushed Leo one step closer to the end of his one week of borrowed time.By Saturday morning, the silence had finally run out of road.The penthouse sat under the flat, gray light of an overcast weekend. Killian was at the kitchen island in a dark sweater, sleeves pushed up, a cup of coffee going cold beside his tablet. The apartment smelled faintly of rain and lemon polish, the quiet between us so heavy it felt like something with actual weight, pressing down on both of us at once.I filled a glass of water at the sink, my fingers tightening around it until my knuckles went pale."Wind died down over the harbor," he said after a while, glancing toward t







