MADE FOR HIM

Restless Shadows

( Bloom's POV)

The days had begun to blur together.

I counted them by the way the bullets echoed in my ears each night, the acrid sting of gunpowder lodged in my clothes, the stiffness in my shoulders from holding the pistol too long. Adrian drilled patience into me, taught me to breathe, to steady, to never flinch. But outside of that, silence filled the hours, thick and choking.

Until this morning.

He came into the room with no case, no weapon, no instructions. Instead, he tossed something soft at me — a heavy, oversized coat, the kind that swallowed me whole.

“Get up,” he said.

I blinked at him from the thin mattress. “Why?”

“Because you’ve been locked in here too long. You need air.”

I frowned at the coat. My instinct screamed to refuse. The outside world was full of dangers, eyes that could see too much. But Adrian was already at the door, not waiting for my excuses.

“Come on, Lia,” he said over his shoulder. “I don’t bite.”

Lia.

The name tasted bitter in my mouth, yet it was the only shield I had. So I stood, shoved my arms into the coat, and followed.

The city swallowed me whole the moment we stepped outside.

It was alive in ways I had almost forgotten. Vendors leaned over stalls piled high with fruit, shouting over one another to draw attention. The smell of roasting meat mingled with diesel smoke and dust. Children darted between legs, their laughter ringing like little bells. Everything was moving, loud, pulsing.

I froze for a heartbeat at the edge of the crowd. My body remembered before my mind did — the panic of being surrounded, the instinct to run, the choking dread that someone would grab me, drag me back into nightmares I hadn’t escaped.

Adrian noticed. He slowed his stride, turning just enough to glance at me. His voice came low, close to my ear. “Relax. No one’s looking at you.”

Easy for him to say. He didn’t have a past buried under ashes and blood.

Still, I forced my legs to move. My steps were shaky, but I kept pace beside him. People greeted him along the way — some with curt nods, others with respect in their eyes. He carried himself like someone who belonged here, rooted in the chaos.

“Do you know everyone in this place?” I asked, my voice small, careful.

“Not everyone,” he replied. A small smirk tugged at his lips. “Just enough to get free fruit if I smile the right way.”

The image of him smiling for fruit was absurd enough to make me laugh. Really laugh. The sound startled me. I hadn’t realized how long it had been since something tore its way out of my chest without pain. Adrian glanced at me, his brow arching slightly, but he didn’t comment.

We lingered at stalls longer than I expected. Adrian bartered with easy confidence, trading coins for bags of vegetables and bread. I trailed behind him, trying to look like I belonged. More than once, I caught myself staring at families — mothers with children tugging their hands, fathers carrying heavy bags while kids clung to their coats. Something sharp twisted inside me.

That used to be my world.

And now it was gone.

I clenched the coat tighter around me and kept walking.

Instead of going home, Adrian led me through a narrow alley that smelled of rust and rain. At the end of it stood a staircase so corroded it looked ready to collapse.

I hesitated. “You’re sure this is safe?”

“Safe enough,” he said. And without waiting, he started climbing.

I followed, one careful step after another, until we emerged onto a rooftop that stole my breath away.

The city stretched wide before us, the sun hanging low on the horizon, painting everything in molten orange. Smoke rose from chimneys, neon lights flickered awake below, and the hum of traffic carried like a restless heartbeat. For the first time in weeks, the world didn’t look cruel. It looked alive.

I sank down near the edge, hugging my knees. Adrian dropped beside me, leaning back on his hands like he’d done this a hundred times.

“You come here often?” I asked quietly.

“Sometimes,” he said. “When it gets too loud down there.”

I nodded, staring at the sprawl of the city. “I get that.”

Silence settled between us, but it wasn’t heavy. It felt… still. Almost peaceful. The kind of silence I hadn’t known since before that night.

Then Adrian tilted his head, studying me. “You’re different when you’re not holding a gun.”

My chest tightened. “Different how?”

He smirked faintly. “Softer. Almost… normal.”

The word stung. Normal. I would never be normal again. Not after what I had seen. Not after what I had lost. But I forced a smile, hiding the storm that rose inside me.

“Well, maybe you’re just seeing things.”

“Maybe,” he murmured. But his eyes lingered on me, steady and searching, as if he knew there was more behind my words than I let slip.

We stayed there until the sky darkened, until the stars began to scatter across the heavens like shards of broken glass. A chill settled into the air, but I didn’t move. Neither did he.

For the first time in forever, I felt something loosen in my chest. A tiny thread of calm. I could almost believe I was Lia — just a girl in the city, laughing at dumb jokes, watching sunsets with someone who made the silence less heavy.

Almost.

But the moment I closed my eyes, the illusion cracked. Behind my eyelids, I still saw the marble floor of my home stained red. I still heard the sound of my mother’s scream, my father’s last breath, the cold voice of the man who had shattered my world.

That memory would never leave me.

It was carved too deep, etched into my very bones.

Adrian made me feel safe — safer than I wanted to admit — but I couldn’t let myself forget. Because safety was borrowed, and borrowed things never lasted.

One day, this fragile peace would shatter.

And when it did, I would be ready.

---

(Adrian’s POV)

The estate loomed against the night sky as I drove through the gates. Tall iron bars closed behind me with their usual mechanical groan, sealing me back into the world I’d been born into.

Home.

If I could even call it that.

The empire my family built stood proud and unshaken — endless wings of polished stone, marble floors that gleamed under chandeliers, portraits of ancestors staring down from gilded frames as if daring me to be more than I already was. To outsiders, this was power. Wealth. Security. To me, it was a cage I’d been trained never to rattle.

And yet tonight, my mind wasn’t on the empire. It wasn’t on the board meetings waiting for me, the endless lectures from my father, the polished venom in my mother’s voice.

It was on her.

On the girl I’d pulled off the streets, the one who called herself Lia.

I set the keys on the table in the grand hall and moved through the familiar rooms, but every step felt restless. I couldn’t shake the image of her standing stiffly in that oversized coat, eyes wide at the market, trying so hard to look ordinary when nothing about her was.

Who was she, really?

There was something in her silence, something in the way her gaze sharpened when she thought no one was watching. Most people I helped never lasted this long — they were either too broken to fight or too proud to accept it. But Lia… she was neither. She was hiding. From what, I didn’t know.

I should’ve kept my distance. That had always been the rule. Train them, get them steady, send them on their way. No attachments. No questions.

But the more time I spent with her, the more she unsettled me. She carried her pain like a second skin, stitched into every movement, every breath. And when she laughed — that small, surprised sound that slipped out in the market — it had punched straight through the walls I’d built around myself.

I poured myself a drink in my father’s study, the amber liquid catching the dim light. It burned on the way down, but not enough to drown the thoughts circling my head.

Why did I care?

Why couldn’t I stop thinking about her?

I leaned back in the leather chair, running a hand through my hair. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was the way she gripped the gun like she wanted to master it faster than I could teach her. Or maybe it was the way her eyes sometimes looked — dark, haunted, too old for someone her age.

Too old, and yet… not honest.

She was lying to me. I knew it. Not directly, not in words, but in the careful way she dodged questions. The false ease she forced into her voice. She had told me her name was Lia, but it didn’t fit. It felt borrowed, like a costume she hadn’t had time to tailor.

And still, despite the lies, I found myself… protective of her.

Dangerous.

That word echoed in my mind.

The glass of whiskey burned on its way down, but it did little to quiet my mind.

No matter how I tried, my thoughts circled back to her. To Lia.

Her name lingered like a puzzle on my tongue, one I wasn’t entirely convinced belonged to her. She carried herself with a shadow that didn’t fit the story she told me — an orphan with nowhere else to go. The way her hands trembled when I first handed her a gun, only for that tremor to vanish the moment she pulled the trigger. The way her eyes darkened whenever violence came up, as if she wasn’t just familiar with it… but shaped by it.

Seventeen, she’d said. Alone, she’d said. But there were too many cracks in her words, and I found myself staring into them, searching for the truth she clearly didn’t want me to know.

I leaned back in the leather chair, running a hand through my hair. Damn it. I had brought her in out of curiosity — a girl lost and broken on the street. I told myself it was pity, maybe even a sense of responsibility. But it wasn’t that simple anymore.

There was something magnetic about her silence. Something sharp in the way she watched the world, like she was always calculating. And in her eyes, I saw a story I hadn’t earned the right to read.

I hated how much I wanted to.

“Adrian.”

The voice snapped me from my thoughts. My father stood in the doorway, his presence filling the study like a stormcloud. Dressed sharp as always, not a strand of silver hair out of place, his eyes cut through me the way they always had.

“You’ve been gone longer than expected,” he said, his tone clipped. “I trust your… extracurricular projects haven’t interfered with your duties?”

I set the glass down, forcing my face into neutrality. “Of course not.”

He studied me, searching for cracks. My father never asked questions he didn’t already know the answer to. That was the danger of this house — secrets didn’t stay buried for long.

Then his tone shifted, lower, colder.

“You recall Nathaniel Kors?”

I nodded faintly. Kors — one of my father’s so-called allies, a man with wealth and reach of his own.

“He’s finished,” my father said flatly. “Weeks ago, the Veynar syndicate moved against him. Tore his empire apart piece by piece. You didn’t hear of it because I had no interest in dragging you into the details, but let it serve as a warning. Even the powerful fall when they grow careless.”

The words sank in, sharp as glass. I knew the Veynar name — everyone in our world did. Ruthless, efficient, merciless.

“They burned everything he built,” my father added, his expression unreadable. “His family’s assets stripped, his name erased. That is the price of weakness. Remember that.”

He turned toward the door but paused just long enough to deliver the final blow.

“You remember where your loyalties lie.”

And then he was gone, his footsteps fading into the cavernous hall.

I sat frozen, glass still in my hand.

Kors, gone. His family scattered. Destroyed not by incompetence, but by a predator no one could stop.

And for some reason, it wasn’t Kors’s ruined empire I kept picturing.

It was Lia.

Her hollow eyes. The grief stitched into every breath she took. The way she clutched a gun as though vengeance itself kept her alive.

Was it possible she’d been a victim of the same merciless hand?

I leaned forward, bracing my elbows on my knees, unable to shake the thought. Maybe her lies weren’t just about survival.

Maybe they were about revenge.

And against all reason, I wanted to know.