I leaned over my laptop again, building a sequence. Not just a collection of images—an arc. Something that would pull a stranger in and carry them through a feeling.
I was so focused that I didn’t hear footsteps in the hall at first.
Not until they stopped outside the workspace.
Not until the air itself seemed to tighten, the way it did when someone entered with purpose.
I looked up.
Ellsworth stood in the doorway.
He wasn’t carrying a tray or a neatly folded garment. There was no faint smile at the corner of his mouth. No amused British dryness.
He looked … stripped down.
Like whatever mask he wore had been removed and set aside.
His posture was still immaculate, of course. But the energy around him was different—compressed, urgent, dangerous in its restraint.
And every instinct in me went cold.
Ellsworth’s gaze found mine.
And held.
“Mila,” he said.
NotMiss Zee. Not polite distancing. My first name.
I stood so fast my chair legs scraped the floor.
“Is Connor—?” The question came out in a rush, rawer than I meant it to.
Ellsworth stepped fully inside. The room behind me continued as if nothing had happened—printers, murmured French, Amaya’s quiet tapping—yet I felt like I’d been pulled into a different dimension where the only thing that existed was whatever Ellsworth was about to say.
“He needs you,” Ellsworth said.
Relief hit first—quick, irrational, almost dizzying.Needs mecould mean a hundred things. It could mean he was rattled. Tired. On edge. That he wanted my presence, my steadiness, my body.
My mind tried to soften it. To make it something manageable.
“I can come later,” I said quickly, already bargaining with time. “I have—Ellsworth, I have a show tomorrow night. Élodie gave me the slot, and I’m on a very short timeline. I just need today to?—”
Ellsworth’s jaw tightened.
The movement was small. Controlled.
But it snapped my words right in half.
“Mila,” he said again, and there was no softness in it now. Only command. “You need to come now.”
I stared at him, not understanding.
He took one step closer. His voice dropped lower, the tone shifting into something that felt like a man speaking from the field, not a hallway.
“Connor isn’t doing well,” Ellsworth said. “He’s … compromised.”
The word landed like a door slamming.
