The moment the conference room doors closed behind us, I felt myself detach from the noise like someone slowly stepping out of their own skin.
Everyone else stayed buzzing—whispers, stolen glances, theories growing like weeds—but I walked straight back to my desk with one goal:
Do not think about Elias.
I could think about Adrian.
I could think about work.
I could even think about the awkward silence that had stretched across the room the moment the two of them—identical, composed, impossible—stepped in together.
But Elias?
No.
My body had reacted the moment he entered, a kind of instinctive recoil I couldn't explain. Like heat radiating from something you're not supposed to touch.
So I sat down, reorganized my files, opened my laptop, and pretended not to see the shadows of the two offices at the end of the hallway. Both doors closed. Both lights on.
All day, I felt them there—like parallel storms waiting for the right wind to collide.
By the end of the day, I still hadn't seen either one of them. Not again at least. Not even in passing.
I stayed behind while other colleagues left— not really knowing what I was expecting.
Eventually, I needed to drop a report off for Adrian.
I told myself it was ordinary. Work. Routine. Nothing emotional.
But my hands betrayed me—they trembled slightly as I held the folder.
When I reached his office, the door was not fully shut. Just slightly ajar.
And I heard them.
Not clearly—just the edges of voices.
"…not what you think," Adrian said, low, strained.
"You're avoiding saying what you actually mean," Elias replied calmly.
My heart stumbled.
I didn't mean to listen. I didn't. But the hallway was silent, and their voices carried in that trapped way sound does in small spaces.
"Since when do you care who I speak to?" Adrian said next, quiet but tight.
"Since it concerns someone connected to what I'm here for," Elias answered.
Someone.
Connected.
I stepped back slightly, pulse quickening. They couldn't be talking about me. They didn't even know me—at least, that's what I kept telling myself. That's what should have been true.
I raised my hand to knock.
But before I could, my name drifted through the crack in a tone I didn't recognize.
"Amara doesn't know anything," Adrian said.
My chest tightened.
And then Elias, voice too calm:
"That's what worries me."
A coldness pooled low in my stomach.
I knocked.
Their voices cut off immediately.
The door opened only a second later, and Adrian stood there like he hadn't been mid-argument—shoulders squared, expression neutral, but his eyes… his eyes told another story entirely. A quiet panic lived there.
"Amara," he said softly. "Everything alright?"
I held the report out. "Summary for tomorrow's review."
He took it, his fingers brushing mine—barely a touch, but enough to spark an ache between relief and confusion.
Behind him, I could see Elias sitting casually on the edge of the desk, hands folded, watching us with unreadable eyes. Not hostile. Not warm. Just… observing.
It made my chest tighten for an entirely different reason.
"I didn't know you were still here," I said, not sure which one of them I meant.
Adrian glanced back at his brother, then at me.
Something in his jaw tensed.
"We're wrapping up," he said. "You can go home early. You've done enough for today."
But his tone wasn't really about today.
Or work.
Or the report.
It sounded more like he was protecting me from something neither of us had a name for yet.
I nodded, even though I didn't fully understand.
"Goodnight, Adrian," I said.
My voice was steady. My heartbeat was not.
I turned to leave, and for a split second—just one—Elias spoke.
"Goodnight, Miss Amara."
I froze.
I didn't turn around. I couldn't. My body was already fighting a shiver I didn't want them to see.
I walked away.
Down the hall.
Past the echo of something shifting—between the brothers, between the office, between fate and coincidence.
And for the first time since Elias stepped into this building, a cold thought settled into my mind, quiet but persistent:
Something is unraveling.
And I am somehow in the center of it without understanding why.