Ella took the papers without a word.
Her hands trembled.
She flipped through quickly, then stopped on one. Her breath caught.
I watched her face shift—grief, confusion, something sharper underneath.
Then she turned on her heel and marched toward the door, papers clutched to her chest.
She threw me a look over her shoulder.
Are you coming?
Of course, I was.
Maybe Paris wouldn't be so bad after all.
11
ELLA
Cold air hit my face the second we stepped outside, but my skin still felt overheated, nerves buzzing in the aftermath of the clinic.
Rose’s name sat heavy in the folder clutched against my chest. Answers. Finally. Real ones. A name. A person who’d been there with her.
I should have been thinking about that.
Instead, I was hyper-aware of the man beside me.
Kane.
Mr. Black, according to the nurse. But he had already told me his first name, and in my head he was simply Kane now, because nothing about him felt formal. He was too solid, too real, too dangerous to belong behind polite titles.
We stopped on the sidewalk, the clinic door swinging closed behind us with a quiet click. Morning traffic had picked up. A woman pushed a stroller past. Someone argued loudly in French across the street. A delivery truck blocked half the road.
Normal life.
And here I was, pulse still tripping because of a stranger.
Because of the way he looked at me.
I turned to him. “Thank you.”
His gaze flicked to the folder in my hands, then back to my face. “You got what you needed?”
“I think so.” My throat tightened. “At least … enough to move forward.”
He nodded once, as if that settled something for him. Like he’d done what he came to do and was already preparing to disappear again.
Panic flared unexpectedly.
Nope.
Not happening.
“You said you were hungry,” I said quickly. “There’s a place down the street. I saw it earlier.”
He hesitated just long enough for my stomach to drop.
