Instead, I type:Someone was following me. Man, forty, dark clothes, professional. Lost him when I came inside.
Three dots appear, indicating he's typing. Then:Stay there. I'm twelve minutes away.
The smart move is to leave. Walk out of this coffee shop and disappear into the crowd before Jax arrives, before hisprotection becomes another cage I can't escape. Preserve the independence I've been fighting for since Gabriel died.
He arrives in eleven minutes. I know because I'm counting, the same way I count ceiling fan rotations and heartbeats and the cost of every decision. He enters the coffee shop scanning the space with the practiced efficiency of someone trained to assess threats, and his eyes find me immediately.
The relief I feel is disproportionate to the situation. Dangerous, even. This man has been watching me, tracking my movements, monitoring my patterns closely enough to know when I deviate from routine. I should be terrified.
I'm not.
Jax crosses to my table but doesn't sit. "Show me where you first noticed him."
"About three blocks back. Dark jacket, jeans, brown boots. He stayed behind me for maybe six blocks before I realized he was following. I took a turn into the crowd near the market, then ducked in here. He walked past the coffee shop about two minutes before you arrived."
"Height? Build?"
"Six feet, maybe slightly under. Athletic but not bulky. Carried himself like ex-military or law enforcement."
Jax's expression doesn't change, but something in his posture shifts. Recognition, maybe. Or confirmation of a suspicion. "Stay here."
Then he's gone, moving through the coffee shop and back onto the street with the kind of purpose that makes people step aside without conscious thought. I watch through the window as he walks in the direction I came from, phone to his ear, scanning faces and doorways.
He returns seven minutes later. Sits across from me without asking permission.
"He's gone. But he was there. I found the position where he would have been when he walked past— a doorway half a block down, good sightlines on this entrance, easy exit in either direction." He pulls out his phone, shows me a photograph of the doorway. "Professional surveillance. Someone hired him."
My coffee has gone cold. I wrap my hands around the cup anyway. "How do you know I didn't imagine it?"
"Because I've been monitoring your routes for two weeks. You're consistent—same subway car, same walking pace, same coffee shop on Tuesdays when you leave the office early. Today you deviated. Changed direction abruptly, increased your pace, chose unfamiliar refuge." He sets down his phone. "That's not paranoia. That's threat response."
"You've been monitoring my routes." I say it flatly, letting the words sit between us. "For two weeks."
"Yes."
"Why?"
He's quiet for a moment, and I can see him calculating how much truth to offer. Finally: "Because at first, Lucien asked me to. For obvious reasons, you're a patron he's invested in protecting. And because after that first night at The Dominion, I couldn't stop."
The honesty is brutal. Uncomfortable. Exactly what I needed to hear.
"So you're stalking me," I say.
"I'm watching you. There's a difference."
"Explain the difference. Because from where I'm sitting, they look identical."
"Stalking is about possession. Watching is about protection." He leans forward slightly, and the movement feels significant. "I'm not trying to own you, Lana. I'm trying to keep you safe from people who are trying to hurt you."
"Like the man who was following me today."
"Like him. Like whoever hired him. Like Gabriel's brother, who called you this morning and wants to meet Thursday for lunch at Marconi's."
My blood goes cold. "How do you know about that?"
"Because I've been monitoring your phone. Texts, calls, voicemails. Nothing encrypted, nothing you've actively protected." He says it without shame, without apology. "Ezra Pope is moving against you. Hiring investigators, building a case to contest the estate. The man following you today was probably one of his contractors, documenting your movements for whatever narrative he's constructing."
Part of me wants to be furious. Wants to be screaming at him about privacy, boundaries, the autonomy I've been desperately trying to reclaim. Instead, I'm doing calculations. If Jax knows about Ezra's challenge, if he's been monitoring threats I didn't even realize existed, then his surveillance isn't parallel to Gabriel's control. It's protection against threats Gabriel's death created.
