POV: Xavier
The master keycard felt like a shard of ice in Xavier’s palm, its plastic edges digging into his skin with every clench of his fist. The halls of the dormant hotel were a cathedral of silence, his own measured footsteps on the plush carpet the only blasphemy. His pulse was a frantic, war-drum echo in his ears, a counter-rhythm to the low hum of the night-lighting. This is idiocy. Sheer, reckless idiocy. He’d told himself he was here for damage control, to find the contract first, to contain the spreading poison of their shared past before it could touch the present. But beneath the cold logic, a more treacherous truth whispered: he was terrified of what Isabella might find alone.The door to the old storage room, tucked behind a utility corridor on the third floor, was an unrem
