Ethan's POV
Bel-Air mornings carry a kind of arrogance that money can't buy, only time can.
A slow rising sun.
Silent streets.
Not a hint of rush.
Everything moves like the city knows the world will wait for it.
I sit in my living room, glass walls on three sides, watching Los Angeles at a distance the way gods watch mortals: amused, detached, certain.
My McLaren sits downstairsmidnight metallic, detail-tuned, idling like a loaded threat ready to cut through the hills if I decide to move.
Mike stands to my right, straight posture, hands clasped behind his back, Italian born, military precision wrapped in custom-tailored silk.
He is not decoration, he is function.
"You executed the delivery?" I ask.
Mike's chin dips once. "Si. She signed. She opened it immediately."
Exactly as planned.
Trauma always opens faster than curiosity.
"What did she do when she saw it?"
He checks his tablet — his voice stays calm.
"Froze. And then… her hands shook. A panic spike."
Good.
Panic isn't weakness.
Panic is energy, raw and available to be rewired.
"She'll try fighting it," I say softly. "Raina always tries to fight first."
"She didn't call anyone," Mike adds. "She didn't even reach for her phone."
Of course she didn't.
She's not like others.
She doesn't collapse outward.
She collapses inward
silently
alone
like she must earn her right to feel
something.
"Keep monitoring her patterns," I say.
Mike nods.
He knows the difference, I don't need live data to feel her.
I've been mapping her emotional architecture for years.
Before Bel-Air.
Before titles.
Before we became who we are today.
I saw her expression, fear i smirked
STALKER ME, NO
That's cute.
I studied her.
There is a difference.
Stalkers are obsessed amateurs.
I am a man who builds neural architectures that learn, evolve, correct.
She is not an obsession.
She is an equation.
"I want roses sent tomorrow," I say quietly.
Mike lifts a brow. "Bouquet? Single?"
"One. BLACK."
Mike certainly raised his left eyebrow, those blue eyes questioning me, but as usual the question died in his mouth,
Black rose means
Obsession and dark love,
Not romantic.
Symbolic.
Black roses are for remembering the moment innocence died.
He nods. "I'll arrange it."
I lean back, pick up the whiskey glass — but I don't drink.
Not yet.
This moment demands clarity, not distraction.
The house is silent except for the AC hum — and silence is where my mind builds most efficiently.
Raina thinks she is cautious.
But she doesn't yet understand two things:
One, I never stopped watching.
Two, her real enemy was never me.
She thinks I'm the threat.
She thinks I came to destroy her balance.
She has no idea,
I am the line between her and total annihilation.
There is a danger worse than me circling her life, and I am the only one who knows how to stop it.
Mike speaks again, quietly.
"Her father called her yesterday. Missed call. She didn't pick up."
I exhale once, slow.
Her father is the only man she trusts and the only man she is terrified to disappoint.
Because he is the last piece of childhood she still tries to protect.
"She will answer him soon," I say. "Fear makes children run to their fathers."
"And you?" Mike asks.
I smirk ,not warm, but precise.
"Me, fear died that day with me Mike"
He waits.
I continue.
"When she remembers the night of December completely , she will realize the truth."
"What truth?" Mike asks.
I turn my head slowly and look at the skyline Beverly Hills glittering like a million lies in daylight.
"That I wasn't the monster in that story."
Silence.
Cold, sharp, perfectly shaped.
I finally bring the whiskey glass to my lips ,and drink.
The burn is deliberate, like swallowing a blade to prove I can.
Mike turns to leave, but before he exits, I speak without looking at him:
"She is going to come to me willingly."
He pauses. "When?"
"When she opens the private folder again. When she stops running from the memory."
"That could break her," he says cautiously.
"That is the point," I reply.
"You want her broken?"
"No," I say, eyes narrowing slightly. "I want her awake."
He bows his head slightly and exits the room.
I remain still.
Glass in hand.
City at my feet.
Her trauma in my calculations.
There will come a moment, not now, but soon, where she will stop breathing like prey and start breathing like fate.
When she no longer fears her past, she will remember exactly who stood behind her the night everything shattered.
And on that day, she will not come to me to run away.
She will come to me because she realizes,
I am the only one she can run toward.
And THAT is the cliff, the drop, the fall.
She isn't standing at the edge yet.
But she is walking to it.
Step by step.
Memory by memory.
Fear by fear.
December by December.
I swirl the whiskey one last time, gold light flickering against crystal like a signal.
"I'm not here to harm you, Rai."
I whisper it into the quiet, Southern drawl smooth as silk.
"I'm here to finish what destiny began."