Chapter 26

AVERY –

It’s been more than a week since she stood in my doorway, said those words like they meant nothing.

Like I meant nothing.

And fuck, maybe she really did mean it. Because I haven’t heard from her since. Not a word. Not a text. Not even a goddamn silence-breaking punctuation mark. Nothing.

I wish I could say I’ve been fine. That I pulled myself together. But that would be a lie, and I’m tired of lying – to myself most of all.

I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I close my eyes and she’s there. I open them and she’s everywhere but here. Her absence has teeth. It bites deep and slow.

I look like shit. Puffy eyes, dark circles, lips cracked from chewing them raw. My chest physically aches. My throat is swollen from the crying that keeps coming in waves, even when I think I’ve emptied myself of every last drop of sadness.

Why did she get to me this way?

She warned me. She told me not to want more. Told me who she was, what she wasn’t. And I heard her. I just didn’t believe her. I was arrogant enough to think I saw the real her, the one hiding behind the armor. I was stupid enough to think I was special enough to reach her. Because there was something behind the walls she build. There is something. I saw it. I touched it. I felt it.

And now she’s gone, and it feels like she took the ground from under my feet with her. I can’t find balance. I Can’t stop wanting someone who clearly doesn’t want me back.

I’ve never done this before – falling.

Especially not like this.

But it’s the truth. The ugly, inconvenient truth I’ve been trying to drown in music, in wine, in the curve of Eli’s shoulder while he holds me during another pointless movie night I can’t focus on.

This was never nothing. She started to become my whole world.

I was falling in love with her.

I am in love with her.

I’m in love with a woman who fucks and leaves. Who kills monsters by night and wears suits like armor. Who pulled me into her world and then spit me out like I was never meant to survive inside it.

And now I don’t know how to move on from this. From her.

***

VICTORIA –

Ten days.

Ten long, hollowed-out days of tearing the network apart brick by brick. Of sitting across from Darius in silent, smoke-filled rooms, watching him scroll through endless data streams and murmur into encrypted lines, all to find the proof that Jennifer is the leak.

So far, we have nothing.

It’s been a necessary distraction from thinking about her, but distractions are a flimsy shield. The moment the world stills – when Darius lights another cigar and retreats behind a haze of smoke, when I’m alone in the silence of my car, or in the echoing space of my apartment – she’s there.

Every. Single. Time.

It’s not just her face. It’s everything.

Even now, a week and a half later, she’s under my skin. 

And it’s killing me.

I’ve cancelled meetings. Snapped at staff until they flinch. I nearly broke a man’s nose last night for a condescending “baby” tossed my way. The control I’ve spent a lifetime building is sand slipping through my fingers.

I left her for a reason, but every second since has felt like a self-inflicted wound.

And the thought that truly guts me?

I shattered her. I turned my back and walked away. But I would do it all over again if it meant she gets to live, to be safe, to be whole.

But God, I miss her.

This silence I created isn’t peace.

It’s a scream, trapped in my chest, with no way out.

***

I Didn’t move for a long time.

The room is silent, except for the faint hum of bass vibrating from the club downstairs. My hands are clenched so tightly around the glass in my hand they’ve gone numb, and my jaw – tightened past reason – is starting to throb. There’s a ringing in my ears, faint but persistent, like something inside me is cracking, splinter by splinter.

I look down at the glass in my hand.

The amber liquid trembles slightly inside it – probably from my pulse, hammering like a war drum in my wrist.

And then–

I hurl it against the wall.

It shatters, loud and violent. Crystal and bourbon exploding across the sleek white paint. The sound echoes like a gunshot, reverberating through my chest, my bones, my goddamn soul.

“FUCK!“

The scream tears out of me before I even know it’s there.

The room goes still again, but I’m not.

I’m heaving. Shaking.

For the first time in twenty years, I don’t feel in control. And I hate it.

I turn, breath hitching in my throat – and there he is.

Darius.

Standing in the doorway.

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t comment. Just watches me with those knowing, steady eyes. Like he’s watching a wildfire and deciding whether to let it burn or put it out.

I feel naked. Exposed.

The shame hits me like a blade. Shame that I lost my temper. Shame that someone saw.

But mostly – shame that I miss her this much.

My chest lifts, shallow and sharp. I press my hand to it like I can hold everything inside.

“Don’t,” I whisper. But it’s too late.

He walks toward me.

Calm. Unshaken.

When he reaches me, he lifts a hand and presses it to my cheek. Warm. Solid. Fatherly. The kind of touch I never had growing up. The kind that doesn’t demand, just reminds you that you’re not alone.

Then, without a word, he pulls me into his chest.

And I let him.

I let him.

My head fits under his chin and for a second, I don’t feel like a weapon. I feel like a woman whose heart is breaking.

A sob catches in my throat–sharp, sudden, ugly. Just one.

I close my eyes.

Try to gather myself again. Bury the weakness deep. Bury her even deeper.

He pulls back, hands still on my arms. His gaze flickers with something different now–something serious, something cold.

“We might have a lead.”