جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 150

Elowen's POVThe rain had turned the front steps of the precinct into a dark, slick mirror by the time my cab pulled up, reflecting the red and blue of a parked cruiser back at me like the building itself was warning me off.Inside, the hallway smelled like wet wool and old coffee, the same as it had that morning, though it felt like a different day entirely, a different version of me who'd walked through that door hours earlier still convinced I could talk my way to an answer. Temitope Benson stood by a metal door near the end of the corridor, an umbrella propped against the wall, a slim folder under her arm.She looked exactly like her reputation. Sharp, composed, not a drop of rain anywhere on her. She didn't offer a handshake. She gave me one quick look and opened the door."In here," she said.The room was small and bare, a steel table, three chairs, a mirror I knew wasn't really a mirror."Have you seen him?" I asked, setting my wet coat over a chair."Ten minutes," she said, op

Elowen's POVThe silence in the kitchen stayed pinned between us until the coffee machine finally hissed out its last bit of steam. I didn't answer him. I couldn't. I walked back to the bedroom, pulled on my coat, and took the elevator down through eighty floors of holiday fog.Temitope had texted thirty minutes earlier. Visitor pass cleared for eleven. Room two. They're moving him to central booking by one.The precinct smelled the same as it had the night before, wet wool and industrial cleaner. A guard ran a wand over my coat, locked my bag away, and buzzed me through with a bored warning. "Ten minutes, ma'am. Shift change is at eleven fifteen."Room two was bare: green-painted block walls, a cold steel table, two chairs bolted to the floor. Leo was already sitting across from the empty seat, small-looking in an oversized gray sweatshirt with the drawstrings pulled out, canvas shoes with no laces. His skin was pale under two days of stubble, with dark circles under his eyes. When t

Elowen's POVI hadn't answered him.The question sat between us in that kitchen until the silence grew too heavy to hold, and instead of giving him an answer I couldn't afford, I'd stepped back from the counter, walked into the bedroom, and shut the door.Saying yes would have been a lie I no longer fully believed. Saying no meant stripping off the last piece of armor I had left and walking straight into a fight where Killian held every single card. And underneath all of it sat Leo's voice from that cold metal room downtown, raw and frantic. It would take a miracle for that man to even look my direction.Leo wasn't just afraid of prison. He was afraid of whatever price Killian would name to save him. Until I understood what had actually happened between the two of them three years ago, whatever quiet debt had been sitting there while Leo lay unconscious, handing my brother's fate over to Killian felt like stepping onto ice without knowing how deep the water underneath actually was.So

Elowen's POVThe penthouse was dark when I finally let myself in.Past the foyer, eighty floors of night pressed against the floor-to-ceiling glass, the city below reduced to cold pins of light through the haze.Killian was already asleep, turned toward the terrace glass, his breathing slow and even. I didn't turn on a single lamp. I washed my face in the dark, feeling my way along the marble counter by memory, the cold water doing nothing to cool the heat under my skin. I slid under the duvet on my side of the bed, keeping inches of empty space between us like a physical barricade. I lay there a long time, staring at the ceiling until my eyes burned, replaying the exact second his face had changed in that customs hall—the brief, unguarded shock, the quiet flick of two fingers to cut off the bidding, then nothing at all.A hundred thousand dollars just to buy the silence in the room and walk away.When the alarm went off at six, the space beside me was already cold. The shower was dry

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