HER POV
The silence of the apartment didn't feel like a vacuum anymore. It felt like a shield.
I stayed on the couch for a long time after he left the room, the warmth of the tea mug finally seeping into my palms. My sister had left a lingering scent of vanilla and frantic, protective energy behind, but the air now was different. It was cool. Controlled. It smelled like him—faintly of rain and something metallic, like the sharp edge of a coin.
I stood up, my legs feeling heavier than they had an hour ago. The adrenaline had burned off, leaving a hollow ache in its wake, but the trembling in my hands had stopped.
I walked to the doorway of the spare room.
He was standing by the window, a silhouette against the city lights. He hadn't turned on the overheads. He didn't need to. He looked like he belonged in the shadows—not as something hiding, but as the thing the shadows were afraid of.
"You're still thinking," I said softly.
He didn't turn around, but I saw his shoulders shift minutely. "I'm observing. There's a difference."
"What do you see?"
"Movement," he replied, his voice a low vibration in the small room. "The world doesn't stop because one man's ego took a hit. It just recalibrates."
I crossed the room, stopping a few feet behind him. I didn't want to crowd him, but I wanted to see what he saw. From this height, the city looked like an intricate circuit board, glowing and indifferent.
"You told him I don't belong to anyone," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "You meant it."
He turned then. The light from a streetlamp below caught the hard line of his jaw and the depth of eyes that never seemed to blink enough. "I don't trade in metaphors, Riya. Possession is for people who are insecure about their own standing. I have no interest in owning you."
"Then why stay?" I challenged, taking one step closer. "If there's no debt, no 'ownership,' and the threat is handled... why I'm still in your apartment?"
He looked at me for a long, silent beat. For a man who claimed to be all about calculations, there was something in his gaze that didn't feel like math. It felt like gravity.
"Because you haven't asked me to leave," he said. "And because the threat isn't 'handled' until you feel like you can sleep without locking your bedroom door from the inside."
The accuracy of it stung. He saw the tiny, invisible ways I was still bracing myself.
"I'm not glass," I reminded him.
"I know," he said, and for the first time, there was a ghost of a smile—sharp and fleeting—on his face. "Glass breaks. You're more like carbon. You've just been under too much pressure lately."
I felt a strange prickle behind my eyes. Not tears of sadness, but the sheer relief of being seen without being pitied.
"He's going to try something else," I said, the thought finally surfacing. "He doesn't know how to lose."
"He doesn't know how to lose to you," he corrected. "He thinks he's playing a game with rules he wrote. He hasn't realized yet that I've moved the board to a different room."
He reached out, his hand hovering near my face for a second before his thumb grazed my cheekbone. His skin was cold, but the contact felt like a spark.
"Go to sleep, Riya. Tomorrow, the world will look different."
"Will you be here when I wake up?"
"If that's what you decide."
I nodded, the exhaustion finally winning. I turned to go, but stopped at the door. "You said you don't fight fair because you just 'end things.'"
"Yes."
"Did you end him?"
He looked back at the window, his profile turning back into stone. "I ended his ability to matter. The rest is just paperwork."
I walked to my room, and for the first time in months, I didn't check the lock on the window. I didn't check the closet. I simply lay down.
The last thing I heard before I drifted off wasn't the sound of the city or the hum of the fridge. It was the steady, rhythmic sound of footsteps in the next room—back and forth, back and forth.
The sound of a sentry who didn't need to sleep because he was busy rewriting the world.I didn't think I would sleep.
Usually, when the adrenaline leaves, the intrusive thoughts move in to fill the space. They usually sound like What if? and Next time. But as I lay under my duvet, the silence of the apartment felt heavy in a way that was actually grounding. It was the weight of a heavy blanket, not a suffocating hand.
I woke up at 4:00 AM.
The room was grey, filtered through the thin slats of my blinds. I expected the usual jolt of panic—the immediate reach for my phone to check for missed calls or messages from him. But my phone sat on the nightstand, dark and unimportant.
I got out of bed, my bare feet silent on the hardwood. I moved toward the kitchen, needing water, but stopped when I saw the light.
The kitchen was dim, lit only by the glow of the stove clock, but a single lamp was on in the living room. He was sitting in the armchair—the one I usually used for reading. He wasn't asleep. He wasn't even scrolling through his phone. He was just... there. A book was open on his lap, but his eyes were fixed on the front door.
"You're still awake," I whispered.
He didn't jump. He didn't even startle. He simply turned his head, his gaze anchoring me where I stood.
"I don't require much sleep," he said. His voice was raspy, a low-frequency hum in the pre-dawn quiet. "You're up early."
"Habit." I moved into the kitchen and poured a glass of water. "Do you ever stop? Being... this?"
"This?"
"On guard. Calculating. Looking for the breach."
He closed the book—a thick volume of history I'd forgotten I owned—and set it on the side table. "It's not a suit I put on, Riya. It's the shape of the room. I see the exits because I've spent my life needing them."
I walked over and sat on the edge of the coffee table, facing him. In the soft light, the hard edges of his face seemed slightly blurred, making him look almost human. Almost.
"My sister thinks you're dangerous," I said.
"She's observant."
"Are you? Dangerous to me?"
He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. The distance between us closed until I could feel the heat radiating off him. He didn't touch me, but the air felt charged, like the moments before a thunderstorm breaks.
"The predator doesn't hunt the forest it lives in," he said, his voice dropping an octave. "You aren't a target, Riya. You're the reason the targets exist."
I should have been chilled by that. Instead, a strange, rebellious warmth flooded my chest. For years, I had been told I was "difficult" or "too much" or "a liability." To him, I was a focal point.
"I saw what you did," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "On your phone. Before you came back. You weren't just calling the police. You were moving things. People."
"I was making sure that when he wakes up this morning, he finds his world a little smaller. A few more doors locked. A few more friends who suddenly don't remember his name."
"Why go to that much trouble?" I asked. "You could have just scared him."
"Scaring someone is temporary," he replied. "Erasing their influence is permanent. I prefer permanent."
He stood up then, towering over me, and reached out. This time, he didn't just graze my cheek. He tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering against the sensitive skin there. The contact sent a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with fear.
"The sun will be up in an hour," he said. "The locks are secure. The perimeter is clean. I'm going to make coffee."
"Stay," I said. The word was out before I could check it.
He paused, his hand dropping. "I'm not going anywhere."
"No," I clarified, standing up to meet his height. "Stay... in here. You don't have to sit in the dark like a gargoyle. You can just be. With me."
He looked at me for a long time, his expression unreadable, searching my face for any hint of hesitation. Finding none, he gave that single, decisive nod.
"Coffee first," he said. "Then we talk about what you want to do with your day. Not what you have to do. What you want."
I realized then that it had been years since anyone had asked me that.
As the smell of brewing coffee began to fill the small kitchen, I sat back down. The city was waking up, but for the first time in my life, the noise outside didn't feel like a threat. It just felt like background music to a life I was finally starting to own again