Chapter Four
899 Words
"You’re staring again,” Amelia whispered one rainy Tuesday, leaning against the kitchen table.
Adrian didn’t look away. He was watching the way the candlelight caught the soft curve of her jaw. “I am just making sure you’re real.”
She laughed in a bright, clear sound that made the dark corners of his soul feel a little less haunted. She walked over, sliding her arms around his waist. “I’m real, Adrian and I am not going anywhere.”
He held her then, burying his face in the crook of her neck. He had spent a lifetime building empires of stone and blood, but this…this tiny, rented room and the girl holding him felt like the only kingdom worth ruling. For the first time, he wasn't looking over his shoulder. He had allowed himself to believe the ghost was finally at rest.
By the eleventh month, they were already a fixture of the town. They walked the limestone cliffs at sunset, their fingers interlocked. He often bought her flowers from the market, white roses, just like the ones he had left on his mother’s grave and she taught him how to read poetry without looking for a hidden code.
They were happy. It was a simple, quiet, terrifyingly fragile kind of love.
Time moved so fast, then came the afternoon where everything shattered.
The door to the apartment let out a high pitch screech as it opened , and Adrian stepped in, the scent of the sea clinging to his coat. He was carrying a small paper bag of cherries, Amelia’s favorite. For a year, this threshold had been his peace.
But the air in the room was different today. It felt kind of heavy.
Clara was standing by the window, silhouetted against the fading Bonifacio sun. She wasn't smiling. She held Amelia’s old phone in her hand, the screen glowing with a stark, digital brightness.
“You should have died in Marseille, Voss.”
The name hit the room like a gunshot. Adrian froze, the bag of cherries slipping from his hand and scattering across the floor like drops of dark blood. In an instant, the Adrian who fixed shutters and bought flowers vanished. His shoulders squared, his gaze turned into polished flint, and the predatory stillness of the VLord flooded back into his limbs.
“What did you say?” His voice was a low, jagged rasp.
Clara turned, her eyes wide with a sick kind of triumph. She held up the phone. On the screen was a high resolution photo of his signet ring.
“Mel is smarter than you think,” Clara whispered, stepping toward him, her voice dripping with poison.
“Did you really think a girl like her, a struggling student with nothing, would just save a man like you out of the goodness of her heart?”
Adrian’s heart hammered against his ribs, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck.
“She saved my life.”
“No dear, she saved her future,” Clara hissed.
“She took this photo the first night, Adrian. While you were unconscious and bleeding, she was documenting her prize. She’s been sitting on this for a year, waiting for the bounty to hit a number she liked. She wasn’t nursing you back to health, she was fattening the calf for the slaughter.”
Adrian looked at the photo. The date stamp on the file was very accurate. The betrayal tasted like copper in his mouth. Every kiss, every morning spent in the scent of fresh bread, every “I love you” whispered in the dark, it all curdled into a calculated performance.
“She’s at the docks right now,” Clara said, her voice growing urgent. “Meeting with some men in a black sedan. She sold the location, Voss. She sold you.”
“That's not possible.”
“Go on, I'll be here waiting, go and see for yourself.” Clara replied.
Adrian raced back to the shore, he saw her standing at the very edge of the dock, a tall man was standing beside her, his dressing didn't belong to a fishing village, he was holding a leather briefcase. He watched as they exchanged white envelope.
The Quiet he had loved for a year shattered. The roar of his old life came rushing back, deafening and brutal. He didn't wait for her to return. In his world, there were no second chances for spies.
Amelia met an empty house when she got back, aside from the note and envelope that was on the bed, there was no sign of Adrian, cherries were splattered all over the floor.
The note read, we are enemies next time we meet!.
She opened the envelope and it contained money.
The next thing she saw was a nurse checking her vitals, she hadn’t even had enough time to process what was going on, where Adrian is and how she got here when the doctor walked in.
“Miss Amelia, you were brought here unconscious, but thankfully you and the baby are fine.” The doctor tried to examine her.
“Ba…by?,” Amelia stuttered
Wha…. Her mind couldn’t process the rest.
“Congratulations Miss, you are pregnant, and thankfully the foetus was not affected by the fall.” The doctor replied.
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