บททั้งหมดของ THE SONGBIRDS CAGE: บทที่ 11 - บทที่ 20

Kiryan’s POV:I watch her disappear down the hallway and it costs me more than it should to let her go.Six years of discipline, and one look through a backstage doorway nearly undoes all of it. I stand very still until my pulse settles back to something I recognise, running through the checklist I’ve built my entire career on perimeter, sightlines, exits, threats because the alternative is standing here thinking about the way her breath caught when she saw me, the way something in her face recognised me before her mind had permission to.She knows now. Not everything. But enough to start asking questions I am not prepared to answer, not tonight, not in a room this dangerous.I key my earpiece and force my voice into the flat, professional register I’ve spent years perfecting. “Perimeter secure. Moving to floor position.”The ballroom, when I step into it, is exactly the theatre of controlled violence I expected it to be. Both syndicates arranged at opposite ends of the room like che

Wren’s POVThe first note leaves my fingers, and the room changes.I feel it more than I hear it.The murmuring behind me fades, then disappears completely, replaced by a silence so deep it feels like the entire ballroom has stopped breathing.I don’t open my eyes.I’ve learned over the years that this is the only way I can do this. Close my eyes. Let the room disappear. Pretend that for the length of one song, I’m back at The Blue Note with Marek pretending not to watch me, surrounded by people who don’t matter enough to make me nervous.Tonight, it doesn’t work.I can feel every person in this room.Their attention presses against my skin, heavy and uncomfortable.And instead of shrinking from it, something unexpected happens.I lean into it.When my voice finally rises with the melody, it comes out rougher than I expected. More honest.At the bar, I always hold something back. There’s a part of me I never give to strangers, no matter how many times they sit there listening.But ton

Wren’s POVHe crosses the room like he’s never had to wonder whether he’s welcome anywhere.I watch him approach.There’s no pretending otherwise anymore, not after the way his expression cracked beneath that chandelier.Every step he takes toward the piano seems to pull six years of distance into a single moment.One room.One walk.One collision I’ve apparently been heading toward my entire adult life without knowing it.He stops close enough that I have to tilt my head back slightly to meet his eyes.Up close, the resemblance to the boy I remember is unmistakable.The same jaw.The same effortless confidence.The same expensive ease in the way he carries himself.But there’s something harder underneath it now.Something that belongs to a man who’s spent years carrying a weight he never expected to have.“That was…” He stops.For some reason, watching him struggle for words surprises me.“I don’t have the right adjective for what that was.”“Try.”I don’t make it easy for him.Some

Elena Voss’s POVI’ve buried two husbands, one brother, and every soft illusion I ever had about mercy. After forty years of surviving men who mistook patience for weakness, I’ve learned one rule that has never failed me:The most dangerous person in any room is rarely the one holding the gun.It’s the one everyone forgets to watch.Tonight, that’s the girl at the piano.I watch the Don’s man, the quiet one, the underboss with the stillness of a trained animal, cross the ballroom when Dario’s grip tightens around her wrist.I file the moment away without reacting.My champagne remains untouched beside me.A man doesn’t move that quickly for a stranger.I’ve spent four decades learning the difference between duty and devotion by watching the way men carry themselves. What I saw tonight wasn’t duty.Then the Don crosses the room.His jaw is tight, his expression carefully controlled as he pulls his underboss aside. It’s the look of a man who has just discovered a crack in a foundation h

Wren’s POVThe drive home feels longer than the one that brought me here.The streets are the same.The buildings are the same.The city hasn’t changed at all.But I have.Six hours ago, I left this apartment believing I understood exactly what my life was.Now I’m not sure I understand anything.Elara.He said my real name like it belonged in his mouth.Like six years hadn’t passed since the last person outside Talia called me that.I spent the entire drive replaying it.How could the stranger who left a flower on my doorstep know a name I buried in a hospital bed at nineteen?My wrist still aches where Dario grabbed me.My chest aches for a different reason.Six years of humiliation came rushing back the moment I recognised his face beneath that chandelier.And beneath both pains is something else.Something warmer.Something much more dangerous.The memory of Kiryan saying my name.Quietly.Like it was a secret.Like it meant something to him.When I finally reach my apartment, eve