This time the kiss was not a simple test. It was slow and deliberate, as if she wanted to show him where she began and where she might leave a trace. Her mouth was warm and soft, and the sound she made against his lips was a small, private thing. He found himself answering with an eagerness he had not realized he carried. The conservatory closed around them like a private room in a crowded house.Her hands moved with the same confidence she used at the docks. She did not stumble. She traced the line of his jaw and then the back of his neck. He felt the tender edge of something that might be trust. It terrified him and warmed him in equal measure.They broke apart because she laughed softly, not at him but at the way both of them were trying to do something risky and intimate in a place that required rehearsed manners. “We should be strategic,” she said, breathless. “But strategy can include pleasure.”He let his forehead rest against hers. “I am not good at balancing both.”“You are l

Arin felt the weight of the request. It was smaller than he expected and more intimate. A token was a fragment of life, an object with meaning. It demanded proximity. It required him to return to the docks and to the place where a man had fallen into the water. The cost was risk, the kind that lived in the bones of men who traded in whispers.“I will find it,” Arin said.Soren handed Arin a small scrap of paper with a time and the initials V.S. scrawled on it. “Ship out on Tuesday. Dockmaster Meran’s ledger will have a gap at intake. Look for it. If you come alone, I will believe you are brave. If you come with muscle, I will think you buy your truths and not earn them. Varek respects earned currency.”Maris watched the exchange and then slipped her hand into Arin’s for a second. The touch was quick and necessary. She mouthed, Find it. She did not need to say more.The docks at night are always a study in waiting. They hold an openness for the sea and a narrowness for the city. Arin m

The rain hadn’t stopped since morning. It fell in long sheets that blurred the manor’s windows and wrapped the outside world in a muffled gray. Arin leaned against the windowpane, shirt half-buttoned, eyes fixed on the line of puddles that stretched beyond the courtyard.Maris hadn’t returned.He hadn’t expected her to—but the quiet after she left felt louder than the rain. The Protocol had spent the last hour feeding him reminders: Meeting: Soren, 21:00. Risk level: Moderate. Task: Deliver token. Retrieve directive. He closed his eyes and let the voice fade.When Evelyn walked in, her steps were sharp enough to cut through the hum of the storm. “Lucan wants a report,” she said. “He thinks you’re hiding something again.”“I’m always hiding something,” he said without looking up.“Then make it look like strategy,” she said, crossing her arms. Her eyes dropped to the cuff of his shirt—Maris’s perfume still faint there. She didn’t comment, but the line of her mouth tightened. “Whate

He woke to silence, thick and heavy. The vault was gone. The walls, the metal hum, the light—all of it replaced by a dull ache that filled his skull. For a few seconds, Arin didn’t move. He wasn’t sure if his body still belonged to him.Then a voice—soft, hesitant—broke the dark.“Arin?”Maris.He turned toward her. She was sitting beside him on a cot in a dim warehouse office, her hair messy and damp, her face pale with worry. A thin trail of dried blood ran down from her temple. She’d been crying.“You’re awake,” she breathed, half relief, half disbelief.Arin pushed himself up slowly. The air felt wrong. He could hear everything—the low hum of a generator outside, the distant rhythm of rain, the faint heartbeat in Maris’s chest. It all moved inside his head like an orchestra out of tune.“What happened?” he asked. His voice came out deeper, rougher.“You passed out after the explosion,” she said, watching him closely. “Soren’s gone. I dragged you out before the roof gave in.”

The morning after the explosion, the Voss estate smelled of burnt paper and tension. Servants moved in silence, their faces pale with questions they would never ask. Lucan had sealed his study since dawn, locking himself away with two phones and a decanter that was half-empty before noon.Evelyn stood outside that door, still in her nightgown, a stack of reports clutched against her chest. She’d been awake since the first alarm call. The docks were in chaos, the press circling like sharks, and Arin—Arin was gone.She knocked once. “Father.”Lucan’s voice came from within, steady but colder than usual. “Enter.”She pushed the door open and stepped inside. The curtains were drawn, the light harsh against the mess of papers strewn across his desk. Maps, shipping ledgers, sealed envelopes stamped with corporate crests. Every piece of it smelled of secrecy.“What happened at West Ninth?” she asked, trying to sound composed.Lucan poured himself another glass of whiskey. “An unfortuna