BEAUTIFUL RUIN

Victor

Roman didn't answer the call.

He let it ring out, his jaw tight, his eyes still on her face like he was trying to decide something important. Then he set the phone face down on the table and sat back down.

"He'll call back," Elena said.

"He always does." Roman picked up his fork like nothing had happened. Like his father hadn't just called to check on the woman sitting in his dining room. "Ignore it."

She couldn't ignore it. Every nerve in her body was standing at full attention.

Victor Blackwell knew she was here. Which meant someone had told him. Which meant Roman's home had eyes she hadn't accounted for and that was a problem that changed every calculation she had.

"How does he know I'm here?" she asked carefully.

Roman's expression didn't shift. "My father makes it his business to know everything about the people around me." He looked up from his plate. "He called me this afternoon about you actually. Before I sent the car."

She kept her voice even. "What did he say?"

"That Mercer Financial has an interesting history." Roman set his fork down again. "That your background check came back clean but something about it felt constructed." His eyes held hers. "His word. Constructed."

The dining room felt very small suddenly.

Victor had flagged her. Five years of careful identity building and the man who had ordered her family's murder had looked at her file and felt something pull at him. Like a thread he couldn't help reaching for.

She had maybe forty eight hours before he pulled hard enough.

"Your father sounds paranoid," she said lightly.

"My father is many things." Something dark moved through Roman's expression. "Paranoid isn't one of them."

The phone rang again. Same number.

Roman looked at it. Then at her. Then he picked it up.

"Father." His voice was completely neutral. The voice of a man who had learned young to show nothing. "Yes she's here." A pause. "Because I invited her." Another pause, longer this time. Roman's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "I'll keep that in mind."

He hung up.

Silence sat between them like a third person at the table.

"He wants to meet me," Elena said. Not a question.

"Tomorrow. Lunch." Roman looked at her steadily. "You don't have to go."

She almost laughed. She had spent five years engineering this exact moment. Getting close enough to Victor Blackwell to look him in the eyes and watch him not recognize the girl he'd had burned alive.

"I'll go," she said.

Something crossed Roman's face. Concern pulling at the edges of his composure. "Elena."

"I'll go Roman." She held his gaze. "I can handle your father."

He studied her for a long moment. Like he was looking for something specific in her face and wasn't sure he wanted to find it.

"Why aren't you afraid?" he asked quietly.

The question landed somewhere real.

She looked down at her plate and back up again. "What makes you think I'm not?"

"Because most people are." His voice dropped lower. "The ones who aren't usually have a reason."

The candle between them flickered. Outside the windows the city hummed its indifferent nighttime hum and Elena sat across from the man she had built her entire life around destroying and felt something she had no name for pulling at the center of her chest.

She stood up slowly. "I should go."

He stood too. Walked her to the door the same way he always did, that quiet unhurried courtesy that she was running out of ways to armor herself against.

At the door she turned to say goodnight and he was close again. Always closer than expected.

His hand came up and his thumb brushed her jaw so lightly she almost thought she imagined it.

"Be careful tomorrow," he murmured.

She looked up at him. This close she could see the worry sitting behind his eyes, genuine and unguarded, and it was so much worse than the composure. The composure she knew how to handle.

This she didn't.

"Goodnight Roman," she whispered.

She was three steps down the path when he spoke behind her.

"My investigator found something else today." His voice was quiet but it stopped her completely. "A witness. Someone who was near the Vasquez property the night of the fire." A pause that felt like a held breath. "She said a young woman crawled out of the basement window."

Elena's whole body went still.

She didn't turn around.

"She said the girl had dark eyes," Roman continued softly. "Like her mother."

The night air pressed against her like something alive.

"Goodnight Roman," she said again. Her voice came out steady.

She didn't know how.

She walked to the car without looking back and this time she didn't check whether he was watching.

She already knew he was.