The leather couch in the living room held the impression of three bodies from last night. The cushions that had been sat in, leaned against, shared without discussion.
My laptop was open on the dining table where I’d left it. Jai’s manuscript glowed on the kitchen island screen, the cursor still blinking on a paragraph he’d been stuck on since yesterday.
The domestic wreckage of a life that had assembled itself around three people without anyone formally agreeing to it.
I did not look at it for longer than I needed to.
The elevator arrived with a soft chime. The doors slid open on empty darkness, the car interior smelling of polished metal and the particular ozone tang of high-voltage systems.
I stepped in first. Old habit. Body between the threat and what mattered. Jai followed without hesitation, Grace tucked against his chest, her small head turning to track the movement of the doors with the alert curiosity of someone who had opinions about elevators.
The doors closed. The penthouse disappeared behind polished steel. The morning light, the abandoned coffee, the manuscript on the screen, all of it compressed into a single image that lingered for one suspended second before the mechanism engaged and the car began its descent.
I did not look at Jai. I looked at the floor indicator above the door, watching the numbers count down with the focused attention of a man who knew exactly how many seconds stood between now and the moment the calculus changed.
Forty floors. Four minutes. One car.
Not enough.
The garage opened around us in gray fluorescent light that did no favors to anyone’s complexion. The air hit thick—exhaust, motor oil, the particular damp concrete smell of undergroundspaces that never fully dry out, layered with the sharper tang of brake dust and something chemical I couldn’t name and didn’t have time to care about.
The elevator doors slid back on polished steel and the temperature dropped six degrees in the space between the car and the ramp, the kind of cold that registered as information rather than discomfort.
Ashe was already positioned. Black SUV, engine running, the vehicle angled with its nose toward the exit ramp and its passenger door aligned with the elevator’s opening vector.
He stood beside the driver’s door with his weight on his left foot and his right hand loose at his side, close enough to the weapon I knew he carried that the movement would cost him half a second.
His eyes were on the ramp behind me, then the service stairs to my left, then the loading bay across the garage. Each sight line was assessed, catalogued, and filed in the order of probability. The kind of work that happened so automatically it barely qualified as conscious thought.
Behind him, the second SUV idled. Four men inside, all pack, all armed, all facing forward with their hands visible and ready. The windows were tinted dark enough that the interior details blurred, but I could read the postures through the glass—shoulders set, chins level, the stillness of wolves that had been told to wait and were very good at it.
Jai stepped out of the elevator behind me. Grace was tucked against his chest, her small head turning to track the fluorescent tubes overhead with the focused curiosity of someone conducting important research on garage lighting.
She made a soft, questioning sound—not quite a cry, more like the vocal equivalent of a raised eyebrow—and Jai’s hand came up to cradle the back of her head without looking at it. Themove was automatic. Muscle memory for a child he’d known for two weeks.
I got them loaded in under ten seconds. Jai slid into the passenger seat without being told, his body remembering the geometry of vehicle extraction the way mine did—low, centered, weight balanced.
Grace went into the rear-facing seat Ashe had arranged behind the driver’s position, the harness already adjusted to newborn dimensions, the base secured with the kind of structural integrity that suggested Ashe had tested it personally.
Jai buckled her in with two practiced motions—chest clip, crotch buckle—and his hands didn’t shake. Not even a tremor. Just the steadiness of a man who had decided, against his better judgment, that fear was a luxury he couldn’t afford right now.
I leaned through the open passenger door. The interior smelled like leather conditioner and the faint cherry blossom residue that came off Jai’s skin no matter where he went.
Grace made another sound—wet, inquisitive, the noise of a creature who had questions about SUVs and intended to ask them at volume—and beneath it, beneath everything, I could hear the building’s systems humming through forty floors of concrete and steel, and none of it sounded right.
My hand found Jai’s jaw. Palm against stubble, fingers pressing into the hard line of it, and I pulled him toward me and kissed him.
It was short. It was hard. It carried three days of replaying and one night of not enough sleep and the specific, inconvenient weight of watching someone become necessary in real time.
His mouth was warm and slightly chapped and he made a sound against my lips, low, surprised, caught in the back of his throat before it could fully form. I tasted coffee and cherry blossom and something underneath that was just him,just Jai, the particular heat of a man who had decided, against considerable evidence, to trust me.
I broke the kiss. His eyes were wide, hazel gone dark at the edges, and the expression on his face was the one I’d seen twice before—sharp, present, completely unafraid of whatever came next.
“Go,” I said.
Then my hand moved to Grace. One brush of my knuckles across the fine, downy hair at her temple, and her small fist curled reflexively against my finger, grip tight for a creature who weighed less than a bag of groceries. Her skin was warm. Alive. The heat of something that had arrived in the world very recently and had opinions about it already.
I pulled my hand back. Slammed the door. Two pounds on the roof—the signal—and the SUV moved.
