The Emperor Heir

The coffee cup left Sophia's hand before she could stop it, and by the time she registered the crash, it was already soaking into a shirt that probably cost more than her rent. For a second, nobody moved. Sophia was so embarrassed and stood frozen with the empty tray still in her fingers, staring at the stranger she'd been trying not to stare at all morning — the one in the black coat who looked like he'd taken a wrong turn on his way to somewhere far more important than Hammondsport. It had already been a disaster of a morning before he walked in. She'd burned the first batch of cinnamon rolls, and her father had cheerfully announced they were down to their last bag of coffee beans. She figured that was as bad as things would get. "I am so sorry." She grabbed a fistful of napkins and went at his shirt like she could undo the last five seconds through sheer effort. "I don't know what happened — someone called my name and I just turned, and—" "You don't need to do that." He hadn't moved. He was watching her with an expression she couldn't quite place — not annoyed, exactly, more like he was working to keep something else off his face. She kept scrubbing anyway, because stopping felt worse, until her hands finally caught up to her eyes and she noticed the shirt underneath the coffee was white. Not just white — the kind that had never seen the inside of a washing machine that also did towels. The watch on his wrist alone looked like it cost more than the café made in a month. She sat back on her heels. "I think I just ruined your entire outfit. Was it expensive?" "Does it matter?" "I don't know. I don't want to know." It was true, and somehow admitting it made things worse instead of better. To her surprise, he laughed — quiet, short, and completely unbothered. "I find this amusing." "I just poured coffee on you." "I noticed." "And you're amused." "Apparently." She shook her head, handing him another napkin. "You're strange." "So I've been told." He glanced toward the door like he might actually leave, and some instinct made her say, "You should probably go home and change," even though telling a customer to leave felt like the wrong move for a business that couldn't afford to lose any. He stood. She braced herself to lose a customer she'd never really had. Instead, he nodded at the counter. "Can I get another one?" She blinked. "You still want coffee?" "Apparently." She laughed before she could stop herself. "Okay. One more." She went back to the machine feeling like she'd missed a beat somewhere — like there was a version of this conversation that had gone the way conversations with rich, irritated customers usually went, and this wasn't it. He drank the second cup slower than the first, watching her from across the café like he had nowhere else to be, even though his phone kept buzzing itself across the table. He silenced it twice without looking. The third time, a text lit up the screen before he could turn it face-down: *Your father is asking where you are.* He locked the phone and set it aside. He was exactly where he was supposed to be, and he knew it. What surprised him was how little that fact bothered him. Sophia noticed the flicker of hesitation on his face before he pushed the phone away and asked, "Everything okay?" He looked at her for a moment too long before answering. "Everything's fine." She let it go and went back to work. When his phone actually rang, he answered it, and she caught enough of the call to piece together the shape of it — a meeting, a father, somewhere he was supposed to be. "I'll be there," he said finally, in the flat tone of a man repeating someone else's sentence back to them, and hung up. Before he left, he set down more than enough money to cover both coffees and the shirt three times over. Sophia picked it up and frowned. "This is too much." "Keep it." "I can't. I'm not charging you for a shirt I ruined by accident." "I said I was sorry, and you accepted. That should be the end of it." "It should," he agreed. "Keep it anyway." She held the money back out to him. He didn't take it — just looked at her like she'd said something he hadn't expected to hear twice in one morning, then walked to the door without another word. She watched him cross the street to a black car idling at the curb. A driver stepped out and opened the door before he'd even reached it, and Sophia felt something in her stomach shift that hadn't been there a minute ago. He paused before getting in and looked back through the window. Found her. She was still holding his money, still hadn't moved from behind the counter, when the car pulled away with a man whose name she didn't know — and whose face she had a feeling she'd be thinking about for longer than one morning warranted. She had no idea he was Adrian Emperor, eldest son of the family that owned half of Hammondsport and the businesses in it. She had no idea that somewhere in that car ride, he'd already decided he was coming back — he just hadn't figured out why yet.