The drive back was silent — but not empty. The kind of silence that carried too much inside it. Not confusion. Not fear. Something sharper. Something that had already begun to take shape before either of them spoke.
Aria sat beside Lucien, her tablet resting on her lap, untouched for the first time since they had left the building. Her eyes weren’t on the screen. They were fixed on the passing city lights, watching reflections instead of reality.
She wasn’t replaying the fight. She was reconstructing it. Every movement. Every position. Every decision Elias had made without being physically present. Because that was the truth now.
Elias hadn’t needed to be there. And that made him more dangerous than either of them had fully acknowledged.
Lucien kept one hand on the steering wheel, the
