Ethan's POV
Weekends aren't for interruptions. They're for observation.
I sit where I prefer to sit on Saturdays, far enough to be invisible, close enough to be undeniable.
Up the street, under a canopy of well-groomed palms, Bel Air bleeding into Beverly Hills like a discreet handshake between old money and newer power. The glass reflects a winter-white sky. December sun with no warmth.
I don't need warmth.
I need accuracy.
I need to see her, what is her reaction unfortunately I can only see her back from the camera in front of her house, so I have to use binoculars, to see her reaction, i know I am far enough, just enough.
The courier pulls to the curb at 9:41 AM. Right on time.
A plain envelope, inside a compact velvet box. No sender name. No flourish. No mistake.
People assume triggers must be diamonds and guns. They forget: memory is the most precise weapon.
She opens the door.
Even from here, through tinted lenses and clean optics, I can read the miniatures of her face like code - cheekbone tension, breath cadence, the small lift at the base of her throat when adrenaline spikes. Her hair's pulled back in that efficient knot she likes for daylight hours; the robe skims at the wrist, white, like surrender.
She signs.
Closes the door.
The line of her shoulders says she's already regretting accepting it.
She doesn't know it yet—only her body does. Bodies learn the truth before minds agree.
I take the whiskey from the console—untouched, ornamental in daylight—and raise it just short of my mouth. The scent rides higher than the taste. I don't drink during surveillance.
But it's a habit to hold something steady while others shake.
Roses live in my memory—hers. She used to smell like chocolate, back before twenty-four broke her bones from the inside.
Two years did a mean thing to your taste, sweetheart. You traded sweet for defense. I respect that.
Survival refines.
I picture her as she is now—Dr. Raina Mehta, Beverly Hills' best psychiatrist; a title she brandishes like armor. She thinks reputation is a door lock. She doesn't know reputation is a window, too. People can look right in.
I close my eyes for a moment and let the old film flicker: the fierceness in those brown eyes when fear shows up, the half-fisted hand at her side as if she'll fight, the chin that lifts a few millimeters to renegotiate fate. She pretends to be granite.
She's porcelain. Delicate doesn't mean weak; it means worth protecting. By me.
The indoor light shifts she's moved into the living room. The yellow lamp glows the way it always does, a fake sun in a careful world. She's set the package on the console. Her fingers hover like she's flirting with a ghost.
Open it.
She does.
The velvet sighs apart.
A simple necklace, nothing loud. Not ₹100 crore, not rare, not museum-grade. Ordinary. The kind a middle-class husband would save three paychecks to buy because he believes it makes a promise permanent.
Her face goes the color of December.
I see it—the full-body pallor, the micro-sway in her balance as the vestibular system prepares for collapse.
The necklace doesn't shine so much as it rings in her head; I recognize the look of someone who's hearing things that aren't present.
Gunshots.
They live in her December like wolves.
Sweat beads along her hairline though the air conditioning is doing its job. Her fingers don't touch the chain. She's touching something else—Christmas lights in a cheaper apartment years ago, a man with hope instead of power, the copper taste of panic when a door slammed and the world split into before and after.
He was middle class, Raina. That was the problem. Middle class believes in fairness; fairness gets chewed. The necklace didn't protect you then. It won't protect you now. But it will speak to you. Loudly.
She breaks away from the console, as if proximity is poison. Sets the box down too hard. The lid flips and then rights itself like a heartbeat trying to restart. I can almost hear her mind drafting clinical labels to control the flood—somatic flashback, trauma loop, conditioned trigger. Good girl.
Name it.
It still owns you.
Down the hall, she stops beside the bookshelf—the one that hides her first camera. She thinks those three little eyes make her sovereign: living room, hall, study. I let her keep that comfort. I don't need to steal from her to know her.
Access isn't always breaking in.
It's understanding.
She returns to the velvet box and stares again. Her shoulders quiver once.
She tries to breathe.
Professional composure crawls back over her skin inch by inch like a silk sleeve, but the hand beneath is shaking.
You tried to open the private folder last night, didn't you, Rai? In bed, laptop on your knees, blue light making a small moon out of your face. Files labeled like tombstones. You slammed it shut when the room tilted. Not cowardice. The body saying not yet.
Today I gave you yet.
I set the glass down, the whiskey catching a mean glint of winter. December has always been loyal to me—cold, exact, unforgiving.
It keeps people honest.
Heat lets them lie.
Cold strips them bare.
Her phone buzzes. She doesn't check.
Good.
The nervous do.
The dangerous decide.
She picks the necklace up, finally. The chain spills across her palm like water, not gleam. Memory is tactile: the weight, the clasp that used to snag her hair, the soft apology that followed sorry, sorry, wait, let me fix it love turned into habit turned into noise.
Then the gunshots.
December.
She drops it back into the box.
Closes the lid.
I exhale slowly.
You're not running.
Not this time.
You're standing still.
That's new.
The first knock comes at the same second a cloud slides across the sun.
Timing isn't coincidence.
The package on the console, the knock at the door, the weekend quiet—it all folds into a rhythm, and rhythm is how you train a nervous system. That's what I'm doing. Retraining.
Her past, to my cadence.
She hesitates.
Checks the peephole.
The building staff.
Another delivery.
She signs again.
This time just a paper—holiday maintenance notice, nothing with teeth.
The nervous system resets a few degrees downward. She thinks the storm might pass. It won't. Storms don't pass; they root.
Back in the car, I tilt my head and listen to the ambient neighborhood hum.
A gardener's blower.
An early lunch conversation two buildings down.
In the distance, a helicopter sketches a dark vowel across the sky. Los Angeles speaks in layers if you've got the ear.
"Ma'am?" the doorman says in her hallway, faint through the glass. He cares. People often care right before they learn caring doesn't scale in a crisis. She thanks him, that careful, soft tone she reserves for service workers she respects. Good. She's decent. I never wanted someone cruel.
She closes the door again.
Locks.
Checks twice.
Touches the deadbolt.
You've done that since twenty-four, haven't you? You think you healed that habit.
You didn't. You learned to make it look elegant.
I remember the first time I saw that hand check. A hospital corridor, sterile air, the hum of a vending machine, and you—Rai—too young to be that empty, gliding your fingers over a door as if faith was a switch. You walked past me. You forgot me. I didn't forget you.
My name is Ethan Hale. I build things that learn—systems, models, machines that watch and improve. The market calls it AI. I call it patience with a data appetite.
Bel Air is my geography.
Control is my language.
And you, Rai—you are the one dataset I curate by hand.
Inside, she carries the velvet box to the study—the room she keeps brutally neat, white and wood, a sanctum for ideas that don't panic. She sets the box beside the laptop, the same laptop that refused to let her open the private folder last night. She sits. Doesn't open the computer. Good. Don't rush. I'm not rushing either.
I lift the whiskey and finally allow a sip—a small one. The burn reminds the throat who's master.
My Southern vowels round the air when I murmur to no one, "Easy, darlin'. Breathe."
She does.
On cue.
Three counts in, four out.
Textbook regulation. I smile. You're so very good at being good.
The phone in her study lights up with a name she doesn't answer—Betty.
Loyal receptionist.
A woman who notices. A woman who will ask soft questions Monday morning and accept soft lies because she respects boundaries.
Every queen needs a guard at the outer gate.
Keep her.
Raina stands.
Walks back to the console.
Opens the box one more time and just looks. I can almost hear the gunshots she hears—their echo stapled to December, the holiday lights bleeding into police blue, the future that cracked like glass under a wrong shoe.
This is the work, sweetheart. Not breaking you. Bringing you back to where the break began so you can learn the shape of it with me standing between you and the next bullet—real or imagined.
You think I'm the danger. Maybe I am. But I'm also the barricade.
I set the glass down and check the time. 10:06 AM. She closes the box. This time, she doesn't flinch. Progress.
Fear is honest.
Ritual is control.
I'm teaching her a ritual that belongs to me.
Weekends are for observation, yes.
They're also for calibration.
Soon, I'll take her from observation to instruction. Not yet. She's still white with December. Still sweating the ghost of a man who bought a small necklace with a big promise and no capacity to defend it.
He gave her an object.
I'll give her a system.
She just doesn't know the difference yet.
I start the engine, the quiet purr answering like discipline. As I roll away from the curb, I glance once more at the window with the half-drawn blinds. A silhouette shifts—a hand at her throat, then dropping.
That's enough for today.
You did well, Rai.
And I've always been patient.