For a long time, I didn't move.
I sat there in the center of the room, legs apart, elbows on my knees, staring at nothing in particular. The surface of the floor. A seam in the concrete. The shape of my own shadow under fluorescent light. My body was present, but the rest of me had gone very far away.
Emiliano is dead.
I tried repeating it in my head, hoping it would sound more believable the second time. Or the third. But it didn't.
It felt wrong in the mouth—like swallowing something too cold, too hard. I couldn't reconcile it with the memory of him. His voice. His indifference. His absolute certainty that nothing ever touched him unless he let it.
He was the unshakeable one.
And now he was… gone.
And he had been gone.
Long before I walked into that opera house, long before I stood beneath that spotlight with a laser on my forehead, bluffing through a meeting I thought I was winning. Sandro knew. He had known the entire time. He smiled through it. Watched me perform like a fool. Let me speak as if I still had protection behind me.
And I didn't.
I had nothing.
No safety net. No hierarchy. No one else on the chessboard who would sacrifice a piece for me.
I was alone.
The silence pressed down on me until I realized I wasn't breathing properly.
Somewhere behind me, I heard the shift of heels. Then Margo's voice—measured, like always, but lined with urgency she rarely allowed to show.
"Rowan."
I didn't respond.
She stepped closer. "Rowan. You're spiraling."
I felt her hand on my shoulder—not comforting, just anchoring. A way to bring me back to the room.
"You need to gather your thoughts," she said, firm now. "The fight is just starting."
I turned to her slowly. My chest was tight. Everything inside me was moving too fast, but the outside… The outside was frozen.
"No," I said quietly.
She blinked, not understanding. "No?"
I stood. My voice sharpened with it. "No. There is no fight. Not anymore."
Margo's eyes narrowed. "You want to give him the field?"
"I want to survive it."
I crossed the room, opened the drawer behind the server cabinet, and pulled out the emergency passport folder. My hands shook slightly as I flipped through the contents.
"I need you to book three tickets. Different destinations. Separate departure times. One-way."
Her voice was low. Careful. "We're running?"
"We're disappearing," I corrected.
She watched me in silence. I could feel her eyes studying me—assessing the breakdown beneath the logic. She didn't speak for a moment. Then: "We?"
"Yes," I said. "You. Me. Reed."
Margo's arms folded slowly. "You're going to drag him into exile?"
"I'm going to drag him out of a war he didn't choose," I snapped. Then softer: "He's already in it, whether I like it or not."
I paused, breath caught in my throat.
"I need you to use one of the old identities. One that's buried. Forgotten. Something clean. I don't want any name that's been burned through paperwork or flagged near Sandro's territories. Find ones that still have dust on them."
Margo hesitated. "I'll have the list ready in forty minutes. You'll have to choose your destination last. Let the data shape the rest."
I nodded, though I wasn't really listening anymore.
I had thought I was playing smart. Moving carefully. Coordinating pieces on a board I understood.
But the truth had surfaced all at once. There was no board. There was no structure.
Only ruin. And I had no plan now. No clever retaliation. No grand reversal.
My only strategy left was vanishing.
Not to win. Not to retaliate.
Just to get out alive.
By the time I reached the building, dawn was just beginning to pull itself over the horizon like something ashamed to be seen.
The city was pale and slow. The streets were wet from a half-hearted rain that hadn't made enough noise to be remembered. I moved through the lobby without looking at anyone. No one looked at me.
Upstairs, the apartment was dark.
Still.
The door closed behind me with a softness that felt final.
For a moment, I just stood there in the quiet.
The air still carried Reed's scent—laundry detergent, lemon shampoo, something warm I'd never been able to name. It clung to the walls. The cushions. My skin. And for a breath, I let myself pretend none of it had changed.
But it had.
I walked into the living room.
He was still asleep—curled on the couch under the throw blanket I'd left him in, limbs loose, one arm flung over the edge, his cheek half-buried in the pillow. My shirt hung off him in soft folds, exposing the dip of his hip and the bare length of his leg tangled in the blanket.
He looked like peace.
And I hated that I had to take him away from it.
I knelt beside the couch, brushed a thumb along his cheek. "Reed," I said softly.
He stirred, shifting under the weight of his name. A quiet breath, a small frown.
"Reed," I whispered again, a little closer.
This time his eyes opened—unfocused, heavy with sleep. He blinked at me, confused, voice scratchy. "What time is it?"
"Early." My voice caught slightly. I cleared it. "I need you to get up."
He pushed up on one elbow, blinking harder now. "Did something happen?"
I paused.
Then nodded. "Yes."
"Bad?"
"Worse than that."
He sat up slowly, still shaking off the haze. "Are you okay?"
"No," I admitted. "But I will be. I just… I need you to come with me. We have to go."
Reed rubbed his eyes. "Go where?"
I stood, already heading toward the bedroom closet. "Somewhere. Anywhere that isn't here."
"Rowan…"
"I'll explain in the car."
He didn't speak again for a moment. Just watched me move around the room, watched me shove documents and cash into the lining of a travel bag, watched my hands move with a kind of calm that didn't reach my face.
When I turned to check if he was following, he was standing now. Barefoot, shirt wrinkled, brows pulled together in that way that meant he understood more than he let on.
He didn't ask again.
He just said, "Okay," and reached for his shoes.
I didn't know how long we had.
But I knew one thing as I looked at him, silhouetted in the blue-grey light of morning:
This was the only thing I couldn't leave behind.
-Reed.
At first, I didn't question it.
When Rowan woke me, when I saw the look on his face—the weight in his eyes, the clipped precision of his voice—I didn't ask. I followed. My body moved before my thoughts did. I trusted him like gravity.
But by the time I stood in the doorway with my shoes in hand, something inside me buckled.
I looked at the bag he was zipping, at the wallet on the table already stripped down to fake IDs, burner cards, folded cash like it was a page being turned.
And I stopped.
"Wait."
He froze.
I swallowed. "I can't do this."
Rowan turned to face me. "Reed—"
"I can't leave," I said louder. Firmer. "Not like this. Not without warning. Not without—without even knowing where we're going."
"We don't have the luxury of plans right now," he replied. "We have to go."
"No," I said, shaking my head, the words thick in my throat. "My grandmother is buried here."
That made him pause. Just for a second.
"I can't leave her alone, Rowan. I can't just… disappear. She's here. Everything I have left of her is here."
He took a breath, stepped toward me. "She's not in the soil, Reed. She's in you."
My chest twisted.
"That's not good enough," I snapped. "You want me to get on a plane, vanish, change names—like none of this ever happened? Like she never existed? I already lost her. And now I'm supposed to run from the last place she touched?"
"I'm not asking you to forget her."
"You're asking me to abandon her."
"No, I'm asking you to live."
He stepped closer, reaching for me. I stepped back.
"You told me once," I said, the words biting, "to use my brain. To think with reason, not emotion. Remember?"
"I do."
"Well," I said, arms crossed. "That's what I'm doing now. I'm making a choice. This isn't just fear or grief, Rowan. This is me saying I don't want to run."
He looked at me then—really looked. And there was something in his eyes that shook. Not anger. Not disappointment.
Panic.
"That's not reason," he said, quieter now. "That's emotion. You think staying is noble, but it's not. It's dangerous. It's suicidal."
"I'm not scared."
"I am."
His voice broke slightly, and I saw it—all the weight he hadn't said out loud. The cracks in his armor, the tremble in the breath he held.
"I can't leave you here," he said. "You don't understand. I'll be looking over my shoulder every day, waiting for the moment I hear your name in the wrong mouth or see your picture on a body bag."
"Then go," I said, softer now. "If it's that bad—go. You don't have to stay for me."
He stared at me like I'd just struck him.
"I'm not leaving without you," he said.
"Then I guess you're not leaving," I whispered.
He didn't speak at first.
Just stood there, in the middle of the room, jaw tight, chest rising and falling like he was swallowing a scream. The silence between us stretched so long I thought maybe that was it. Maybe he would just turn, walk out, leave me to my ghosts like I'd asked.
But then—
"Do you think I want to leave?" he said, low and sharp. "Do you honestly think I wanted to wake you up and tell you we needed to vanish?"
I opened my mouth, but nothing came.
He stepped closer, eyes burning—not with anger. With something worse.
"You think I don't know what this place means to you? That I didn't see how your hands shook at her grave, or how you still look at the front door like she might come through it just once more?"
My chest clenched. "Rowan—"
"No, let me—just let me talk." His voice cracked, and for once, he didn't hide it. "I have done awful things. I've played games with people's lives. I've watched men die and stood still. But this—you—was never meant to be part of that world."
I felt the air shift in the room. Like everything had gone smaller. Quieter.
"I told myself I was keeping you safe by keeping you close. That the chaos wouldn't reach you if I just kept moving fast enough. If I played enough parts. But I was wrong."
He looked down, then back up at me, and God—he looked wrecked.
"You are the only thing I have left," he said, voice hoarse. "Do you understand that? Not money. Not the name. Not the operation. Not the house, or the aliases, or the passwords. Just you."
I stared at him, heart thudding, throat tight.
"And if I leave here without you, Reed…" He shook his head, eyes glassing. "I won't make it. I might be breathing, but I'll be gone. I'll rot out from the inside knowing the one thing I couldn't protect is the one thing that mattered."
Silence stretched again—except now it hurt.
"I know what you're giving up by leaving," he added. "But please—don't ask me to give you up in return."
I couldn't breathe.
I couldn't not feel.
His words landed like something sacred and ruined, all at once.
And maybe—maybe for the first time—I saw all of him.
Not Rowan. Not Lucien. Not the perfect, poised illusion I'd fallen into like a trap disguised as charm.
Just the man. And he was breaking for me.
He didn't argue anymore. Didn't raise his voice, didn't try to twist my words back into his plan. He just looked at me with an expression I couldn't name, like he'd aged in seconds, like something vital had folded inward and closed.
"Alright," he said, softly, with the kind of stillness that usually comes after a storm has finished breaking everything. "I'll walk out now."
And just like that, something inside me began to unravel.
He turned without waiting for a response, moving toward the credenza near the door—every step unhurried, but unbearably final. I watched as he reached into his coat pocket with calm hands, retrieved a plain white envelope, and placed it on the edge of the table like he was leaving behind more than just paper.
"There's your ticket," he said, his voice even, but quieter now, like he didn't want to disturb the air between us. "Delémont. It's all inside—passport, enough cash to land quiet, stay quiet. You won't be asked any questions at that border."
I looked at the envelope and felt my body go still.
He continued, tone clipped by restraint. "I'll land in Stuttgart. From there I'll take the train and make my way to you. I'll probably arrive before you, depending on the schedule. I'll wait."
He hesitated only briefly, then added, "Margo's flying to Tbilisi. Three points. No overlap. No noise. It's clean."
His words were clinical. But they were soaked in something he didn't know how to say. It was in the pauses. In the way he avoided looking directly at me. In how his hand stayed resting on the table for just a second too long, like he wasn't sure if he'd ever be back to pick anything up.
And then—finally—he turned back to me.
Not with urgency.
Not even with hope.
Just… with the kind of quiet resolve that feels like the end of something real.
"I want you to come because you choose to," he said, his eyes never leaving mine. "Not because I begged, or because I made it impossible not to. I want you to want to live. To leave. To choose yourself. But I can't stand here any longer and wait for the answer."
He stepped in close. Close enough that I could feel the heat of him, even as everything else around me had gone cold. His hands rose slowly, cupping my face like I might vanish, like if he didn't do it now, he never would.
And then he kissed me.
Long. Certain. Devastating.
The kind of kiss that didn't ask for permission or forgiveness. The kind that wrote things down in places that memory can't erase. It wasn't frantic. It wasn't desperate. It was farewell, spoken in a language only the body knows.
When he finally pulled back, his forehead leaned against mine just briefly, breath trembling between us.
"Think it through," he whispered, like a plea he didn't want to call a plea.
Then he stepped back, shrugged into his coat, and opened the door with a calmness I knew was forged, not felt.
No dramatic exit. No last glance over his shoulder.
Just the soft click of the door closing.
And the echo of everything he didn't say lingering behind it.