Part 2
Elena’s breath caught.
The phone felt heavier.
“I don’t know.”
The man looked away again, and this time his hand came up toward his earpiece. He was listening to something Elena could not hear. His mouth moved once, silently, as if he were giving an instruction without wanting to say it in front of her.
Then he looked back.
“Stay with me.”
“What happened?” Elena asked.
Her own question frightened her. It sounded smaller than she meant it to. Like a child asking why the lights had gone out.
The man’s eyes stayed on hers.
“I don’t know yet.”
She stared at him.
That answer was worse.
The penthouse had been built to make a person feel protected from the city. It stood high above the streets, above the noise, above weather and traffic and locked doors on ordinary apartments. The windows were thick. The elevator opened only into a private entryway. The walls were silent even when storms moved through the city.
Elena had always disliked the height.
Not because she was afraid of falling. She was afraid of being too far from anyone who might hear her.
The man on the screen said, “Elena, I’m going to connect someone else.”
Her fingers curled more tightly around the phone.
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“No.”
“You do.”
His face softened for a brief moment, and that made her more afraid than the urgency in his voice.
“No,” she said again, weakly.
“Elena.”
“He’ll be angry.”
“He needs to know.”
“He’s always angry.”
The man paused.
A sound came from somewhere behind her.
It was soft. So soft that she almost told herself it had been the building settling.
Then something clicked in the hallway.
Elena stopped breathing.
On the screen, the silver-haired man watched her face change.
“What did you hear?”
She could not answer.
“Elena.”
She tried to turn her head but pain caught in her shoulder. The hallway stayed dark. The doors remained closed. The room around her held its breath.
The cane was still resting against the chair.
The orchids had not moved.
The broken glass shone under the low warm lights.
Nothing was there.
Nothing she could see.
“Please,” she whispered.
The man did not ask her to repeat herself.
“I’m connecting him now.”
The call shifted.
The image of the silver-haired man shrank and disappeared. For a moment, Elena saw only herself again in the dark screen, a narrow reflection broken by the crack at the edge of the case. Then another face appeared.
A man in his thirties sat behind a polished desk in a room of dark wood and warm light. Curtains framed a window behind him, though the city beyond was hidden. His suit jacket was charcoal gray, nearly black, fitted close at the shoulders. His white shirt was open at the collar only enough to suggest he had been sitting there for hours. A dark tie lay straight against his chest. A metal watch glinted at his wrist when he lifted the phone to his ear.
He did not speak immediately.
His eyes fixed on Elena.
The change in him was almost invisible at first. His mouth stopped moving. His shoulders went still. One hand flattened on the desk.
“Elena?”
She had known his voice would sound like that.
Controlled.
Low.
Too calm.
Her mouth trembled.
“Ronan.”
He stood so quickly that the chair behind him rolled back and struck the wall.
The sound reached her through the phone.
“Who did this?”
She looked toward the hallway again.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you alone?”
“I don’t know.”
His face changed then. Not into panic. Not into grief. Something harder. Something that seemed to close around the question and refuse to let it leave.
“Gideon is with you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The silver-haired man’s voice came through faintly, no longer visible but present in the call. “She is injured. Conscious. Possibly in shock.”
Ronan’s eyes never left Elena.
“How badly?”
“I don’t know,” Gideon said. “She’s breathing. She can speak.”
“I’m fine,” Elena said.
The lie came out automatically.
Ronan’s expression tightened.
“No, you’re not.”
She wished he had not said that.
She wished he had said something easier. Something clean. Something she could hold on to.
Instead he leaned closer to the phone, one hand gripping the edge of his desk.
“Look at me,” he said.
She did.
“I need you to keep your eyes open.”
“I am.”
“You’re closing them.”
“I’m tired.”
“I know.”
His voice softened for one second, and she heard something in it she had not expected. Not anger. Not command.
Fear.
It was quiet, but it was there.
The office behind him remained immaculate. Dark wood panels. Soft golden lights. Heavy curtains. A desk without clutter except for a glass of water, a closed leather folder, and a single pen placed precisely beside it. The room looked like a place built for decisions that affected other people. A place where nothing happened by accident.
Ronan looked out of place in it now.
Too still.
Too human.
“Tell me what you remember,” he said.
Elena’s breath shook.
“I was putting the flowers in water.”
“Okay.”
“The vase.”
“Okay.”
“I heard—”
She stopped.
The sound came again.
Not from the hallway this time.
Closer.
A faint movement near the far side of the room. A soft brush, maybe fabric against a wall. Maybe a foot against the carpet in the sitting area beyond the marble.
Elena pressed herself flat against the floor.
Ronan saw it.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t do that.”
“I don’t know.”
“Elena.”
“I don’t know.”
Her voice rose on the last word, then broke.
The phone slipped from her hand.
For one sick second, it fell face down on the marble.
Ronan’s voice became distant and sharp. Gideon said her name. The sound of them came through muffled against the floor.
Elena reached for it, missed, and felt her chest seize.
No.
May you like
No, no.
She dragged her fingers across the marble. A shard of glass pressed into her palm. She flinched but did not pull away until she had turned the phone over.
