And that was the problem.
She slid the rose and her coffee onto a table near the window, her gaze scanning the café once, then again.
No one lingered. No one watched.
Still, the prickling under her skin didn’t ease.
She sat, fingers curling tight around the warm ceramic. The steam spiraled upward in soft coils, catching the light—so ordinary, so familiar.
But nothing about this felt ordinary.
The rose lay between her and the window, flawless and unblemished.
A message.
But from who?
Her jaw tightened.
And for the first time in days, she couldn’t decide which was worse:
That it might be a warning from Evelyn.
Or that it wasn’t.
She was staringat the rose when something shifted behind her.
Not a sound. Not movement.
A presence. Barely there. Unmistakable.
Like a static charge in the air before a storm breaks.
It moved too close. Hung too long. Deliberate in a way that didn’t belong in the comfort of a café.
A shadow where there shouldn’t have been one.
“Fancy running into you here.”
The voice cut through the low hum of conversation, threading through her thoughts like a needle—precise, practiced.
Sebastian.
She didn’t turn right away. Didn’t flinch. But her focus narrowed instantly, her pulse ticking upward.
The shiftin the atmosphere wasn’t imagined. She felt it.
The invisible compression of space, like gravity had tilted toward him the moment he stepped in.
He moved through the room with a confidence too casual to be genuine. Every step designed, not instinctive. Like he’d been waiting out of frame, watching the scene unfold until it was his cue to enter.
His suit was immaculate. Tie knotted with perfect tension. Posture deceptively relaxed.
A performance, down to the breath.
He slid into the seat across from her without so much as a glance for permission. A quiet invasion. The kind that didn’t require force, only presence.
His eyes drifted to the rose, a slow smirk lifting at the corner of his mouth.
