The call didn’t end the night.
It fractured it.
Seraphina sat on the edge of the bed long after Lucien stepped into the shower, her hands folded in her lap, her mind replaying the words he’d said again and again.
Your former employer.
The phrase carried weight. Not because she hadn’t expected her past to surface someday—but because she’d chosen that job believing it was clean. Strategic. Safe.
She had been wrong.
Water stopped running. A door opened. Lucien emerged in a towel, hair damp, eyes sharp despite the late hour. He’d always looked like this after conflict—quietly dangerous, stripped of pretense.
“You’re thinking too loudly,” he said.
She huffed a weak laugh. “You always say that.”
“Because it’s usually true.”
He crossed the room and sat beside her. Not touching. Giving h
