She just tilted her head slightly, voice soft. “She ran away during her engagement party. I haven’t seen her since.”
It was flawless. A lie made of silk and steel.
The officer’s gaze narrowed, but she didn’t blink. And I didn’t let myself move. Not yet. Not unless he reached for her. Not unless he pushed.
“Have you seen or spoken to her recently?”
His eyes locked on me now.
I stepped forward, just enough for him to feel it.
Not to intimidate.
To warn.
“No,” Seph said, calm and clear. “She never even said congratulations.”
She turned her face slightly, just enough to meet my eyes.
And for a moment—just a flicker—I saw what we were becoming. Not broken people trying to survive. But something more dangerous.
Aligned.
The officer lingered, like he thought he might get something else out of us.
He wouldn’t.
His gaze lingered on her a second too long.
That was all it took.
The moment stretched, brittle and sharp, and something inside me snapped tight. I stepped forward, slow but certain, letting the light catch the ink across my chest—black lines carved into muscle, every one of them a story, a warning, a promise.
The cop noticed.
They always did.
His eyes widened just slightly—enough for me to see it. The flicker of instinct. That primal awareness that he wasn’t the apex predator in the room anymore.
“Unless you have a warrant,” I said, voice low and cold, honed to a lethal edge, “you’re done here.”
No need to raise my voice. People like him recognized danger when it spoke softly.
His whole posture shifted—subtle, but there. Wariness curled around him like smoke. He wasn’t expecting resistance. He thought he was knocking on the door of a scared couple clinging to secrets. He didn’t expect me.
Seph didn’t say a word, but she didn’t have to. I felt her beside me—still, strong, silent. Her pulse was quick beneath her skin, but her stance didn’t waver. Not even when the officer tried to stand his ground.
“I’m just trying to get some answers regarding your ex-fiancée’s disappearance,” he said, but the confidence in his tone cracked. A hairline fracture under pressure.
Seph’s voice came like frost. “Callista is not here. She made her choice.”
He flinched.
Not visibly. Not to anyone else.
But I saw it. Felt it.
She wasn’t just mine anymore.
