Emilia was in Viin.


    And she was more beautiful in person than on any screen. Every photo, every video I’d obsessed over for three years was an insultpared to seeing her now.


    Our girl was always beautiful but this…was untouchable.


    I had built seven different scenarios for how this would happen. Seven careful, staged collisions in restaurants, foyers, streets she never walked without a driver. Each one controlled.


    In the end, temptation got the better of me, I didn’t want to wait another day.


    My phone buzzed. Bastion’s name lit the screen. I’m at the south edge. Tell me when it’s done.


    I didn’t answer. I looked up instead—and there she was.


    Standing out front, wrapped in her own world.


    She had no idea three different people had already tried to take photos of her. All three phones were now in my men’s pockets. They’d learned the rule—nobody photographed our girl without permission.


    She was smiling at something on her phone. And it hurt, physically fucking hurt that she wasn’t smiling at me.


    I flicked the cigarette to the side, and walked towards her.


    It was ridiculous how nervous I felt.


    She looked up before I said her name Finally, her eyes were they belonged, on me.


    I saw her quiet panic. The way her shoulders tightened, like she’d just run through her options to escape me.


    “Luca Crow of all people.”


    It took all my self control to not react to her saying my name.


    She forced a smile, but it wasn’t the smile that kept me up at night.


    No, the smile she was giving me right now was trained. Polite and polished just how the Adams Dynasty taught her. Small enough to make me think she cared, tight enough to look genuine.


    But her eyes were empty, it was always the smallest things that gave Emilia away and that only drove my need to watch more carefully, because it would be easy to miss.


    “Emilia.”


    She arched her eyebrows almost looking amused.


    I knew better she was defaulting to lightness to ease the awkwardness.


    But it wasn’t awkward for me, this… this was fucking salvation.


    “Have you been well,” she asked.


    That made me look at her in the eyes, “Have I been well?” I repeated it just so she could hear how she said.


    Come on baby. Give me more. Pretend to not care better. I’d rather her yelling at me for not answering her, at least then I could skip this part. And get to the part that matters, us begging for forgiveness and earning her trust back.


    She lowered her phone, “I thought you two were dead.”


    Now we’re getting somewhere.


    Her lips parted like she wanted to argue — then closed again. She pressed them tight, like the words would betray her before she was ready.


    I leaned in slightly. “You thought we were dead, angel. And what? You just kept smiling for them? Kept giving that mask while we were bleeding out of your life?”


    Her hand twitched against her bag.


    “I looked Luca. I watched the obituaries cause neither you or Bastion could return a message.” She looked down, then back up fast, like she was afraid of what I’d see if she lingered too long away from me. “But you weren’t dead, you’d just forgotten.”


    There it was. Finally. The usation I’d been starving for.


    But fuck, it hurt.


    Her words cut cleaner than any de I’d taken in Viin alleys. She thought we had forgotten. Not dead. Not buried. Just… gone from her life because we chose to leave her there.


    And maybe she was right. Maybe silence was worse than a coffin.<fnb5d1> N?w ?ovel chapt?rs are published on Find?Novel</fnb5d1>


    I deserved it. We both did.


    Still, it carved.


    Three years of systems, contracts, blood spilled to keep her untouchable, and all she remembered was the absence. Not the empire we built around her name. Not the nights we kept heirs from breathing in her direction. Not the war we fought in the dark so she wouldn’t bleed in the light.


    She remembered the silence.


    And she was right to.


    I felt the spiral crack in my chest, ice spreading under my ribs. I wanted to argue. To tell her she had no idea what we’d done, what it cost. To break the world in half just to prove it.


    But I didn’t. I couldn’t.


    Because I saw the pain in her eyes. The way she flicked her gaze away from me, fast, like she couldn’t hold the weight of it and still breathe.


    So I stepped closer.


    Not to intimidate. Just to feel her air in my lungs. Close enough that she couldn’t pretend I was a ghost anymore.


    Her head turned slightly, attention sliding down the street like she was searching for an out.


    I moved with her. Controlled. Close enough that the city noise faded between us.


    “Forgotten? Angel, I don’t forget. Not you. Not ever.”


    Forgotten.


    The word burrowed under my skin like a nail dragged slow.


    She thought I had put her down. Left her behind. As if my lungs had managed one breath in thest three years without her name in it. As if Bastion and I hadn’t carved Viin into a coffin big enough to bury every man who tried to take her ce.


    She didn’t know. Couldn’t. Because we’d built it all in silence. A fortress disguised as distance. And what did silence look like to her? Abandonment.


    Fuck.


    It was the one thing I couldn’t forgive myself for, even while I’d sworn it was the only way to keep her alive.


    I should’ve written. Called. Bled at her feet until she understood. Instead I’d left her with nothing but quiet. And quiet had taught her the worst thing possible… that we’d forgotten.


    I reached out before I thought better of it. Just to feel her wrist, her warmth, to remind myself she was real and mine and still standing in front of me.


    “Don’t, Luca.”


    She said it fast, stepping back just enough that my hand didn’t touch her.


    Fuck that hurt. She didn’t want me to touch her.


    She shook her head once, trying for lightness. “It’s fine. It’s in the past.”


    “It’s not fine.” My voice came out low, tight. “And it sure as fuck isn’t past.”


    Her lips parted. She blinked, caught off guard by it. She really believed we had walked away.


    Calm. I had to be calm. Don’t spiral.


    “You think this ends because you say it does?” I stepped in again, close enough she’d feel me.


    “No. I think it ended three years ago when I stopped begging for a reply from you and Bastion. After you both left me on read for months.”


    Her words punched were a punch to my ribs.


    “I’m sorry,” I forced out. Two words I had rehearsed a thousand times and hated how weak they were.


    Sorry I that silence was safer. Sorry I built an empire instead of showing you the bones we were breaking for you. Sorry I let you think we forgot when every hour was you, you, you.


    She nodded once. Quick. As if that was enough.


    No.


    That wasn’t the reaction I wanted. Not even close.


    I wanted her fury, tears, her voice raised, calling me every name I deserved. I needed her to bleed it out, to w at me until the silence I’d forced her to choke on turned into fire I could take, absorb, pay for.


    Instead she epted it. Dismissed it.


    As if three years of worship, obsession, of building a city she could walk through untouched—meant nothing.


    As if I meant nothing.


    The eptance gutted me worse than her anger ever could have.


    “Don’t nod like that.” My voice dropped. “Don’t you dare dismiss me like I’m some heir you can brush past.”


    Her eyes flicked up at mine, startled by the edge.


    Good. Look at me. Don’t erase me.


    “You were never that to me.” Her eyes didn’t flinch. She held my stare like the knife was meant for me. “That’s why it hurt. But it won’t again. I’ll be polite. I’ll be nice. But don’t expect any more from me.”


    It was Veil all over again. Watching her delete the ount, delete the memories, delete me.


    Only this time, she wasn’t deleting code. She was deleting the boy who’d bled for her, the man who built a city around her absence.


    It hurt. It fucking hurt.


    I wanted to tell her the truth.


    That her stylists answered to me. Bastion built ckout blinds in every ce she slept.


    But if I said it now, it would sound like chains.


    Like obsession without devotion. Possession without love. And she’d be right to run.


    So I swallowed it.


    “You can give them polite. You can give them nice. But don’t you ever give that to me.”


    Her eyes narrowed, searching me. “Then what do you want?”


    “You,”


    “I’m angry with you.”


    “I’ll take that.” I was seconds away from dropping and begging her, “I’ll take your anger. I’ll take your rage. I’ll take every piece of you if it means you’re still looking at me.”


    “You two always did confuse me.”


    I stepped closer, letting her feel how deliberate the correction was. “Do,” I said. “We do confuse you, baby. Present tense. Never past.”


    Her throat tightened, her mask slipping just enough for me to see the crack underneath.


    Good. Don’t put me in history. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking we’re behind you.


    I couldn’t stop myself. My hand moved before thought could catch it, brushing her hair back from her face.


    The moment shattered when I realized what I’d done. “Sorry,” I muttered.


    I hated that she didn’t want me to touch her.


    She only gave me a softer smile, almost sad. “I need to go.”


    “Need, or want?”


    Her eyes held mine. “I need to.”


    My fingers brushed her hip, I wanted to memorize the shape of her again.


    “Luca.”


    “Mmm.” A sound I couldn’t bury, not when she said it like that.


    And then she stepped back. One pace, then another. The space between us cold already, her moving closer to the car.


    The spiral tore through me.


    Three years of starving, and when I finally had her in reach, I had to let her go.


    I hated it. Hated myself for letting it happen.


    She stepped closer to the car. I moved before she could, holding the door shut.


    “Dinner,” I said.


    She titled her head, those beautiful eyes locked with mine. “I told you. I’m busy.”


    “And I’m desperate.”


    “Luca Crow, you are many things. Desperate isn’t one of them.” She rolled her eyes. “I have to go,”


    “Where?”


    “Luca.”


    “Dinner,” I asked again and I wasn’t below begging. She was the only person I would drop to my knees for.


    She held my gaze. “Maybe.”


    I leaned in, letting her see how deliberate my words were. “It’s not a yes.”


    She exhaled slowly, lips barely moving. “It’s also not a no.”


    The smallest victory. Enough to spiral over until the next time.


    I almost smiled. Just enough for her to see. Because she was right, it wasn’t her shutting me out.


    Maybe meant I could press again. Tomorrow. The next day. Every day until she broke and gave me what I wanted.


    And it gave me permission to stalk her the way I already nned to, trailing her routes, intercepting her hours, asking her again and again until she admitted she wanted it too.


    I opened the car for her.


    “Goodbye, Emilia.”


    She looked at me, and I saw her pain. I wanted to hug her, tell her all the ways I’d make this up to her.


    Instead I closed the door with care, softer than I meant to, my hand dragging a second longer.


    So close and still so far away from me.


    Seeing her was supposed to be a relief, ease some of the pain of not having her. Instead it’s worse. My need to take her pain, nearly fucking paralysing.


    The car pulled into traffic.


    Driven by a driver who was trained by Bastion, who drove her as if his life depended on her arriving safely, because it did.


    The car warmed because our girl never deserved to sit in the cold.


    That’s what we did, we made the world bend around her.


    I lit another cigarette. The tail lights got further away and I pulled my phone out to message Bastion. Tell him how beautiful our girl is. And how it was going to take time.