Our girl was always beautiful but this…was untouchable.
I had built seven different scenarios for how this would happen. Seven careful, staged collisions in restaurants, foyers, streets she never walked without a driver. Each one controlled.
In the end, temptation got the better of me, I didn’t want to wait another day.
My phone buzzed. Bastion’s name lit the screen.I’m at the south edge. Tell me when it’s done.
I didn’t answer. I looked up instead—and there she was.
Standing out front, wrapped in her own world.
She had no idea three different people had already tried to take photos of her. All three phones were now in my men’s pockets. They’d learned the rule—nobody photographed our girl without permission.
She was smiling at something on her phone. And it hurt, physically fucking hurt that she wasn’t smiling at me.
I flicked the cigarette to the side, and walked towards her.
It was ridiculous how nervous I felt.
She looked up before I said her name Finally, her eyes were they belonged, on me.
I saw her quiet panic. The way her shoulders tightened, like she’d just run through her options to escape me.
“Luca Crow of all people.”
It took all my self control to not react to her saying my name.
She forced a smile, but it wasn’t the smile that kept me up at night.
No, the smile she was giving me right now was trained. Polite and polished just how the Adams Dynasty taught her. Small enough to make me think she cared, tight enough to look genuine.
But her eyes were empty, it was always the smallest things that gave Emilia away and that only drove my need to watch more carefully, because it would be easy to miss.
“Emilia.”
She arched her eyebrows almost looking amused.
I knew better she was defaulting to lightness to ease the awkwardness.
But it wasn’t awkward for me, this… this was fucking salvation.
“Have you been well,” she asked.
That made me look at her in the eyes, “Have I been well?” I repeated it just so she could hear how she said.
Come on baby. Give me more. Pretend to not care better. I’d rather her yelling at me for not answering her, at least then I could skip this part. And get to the part that matters, us begging for forgiveness and earning her trust back.
She lowered her phone, “I thought you two were dead.”
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Her lips parted like she wanted to argue — then closed again. She pressed them tight, like the words would betray her before she was ready.
I leaned in slightly. “You thought we were dead, angel. And what? You just kept smiling for them? Kept giving that mask while we were bleeding out of your life?”
Her hand twitched against her bag.
“I looked Luca. I watched the obituaries cause neither you or Bastion could return a message.” She looked down, then back up fast, like she was afraid of what I’d see if she lingered too long away from me. “But you weren’t dead, you’d just forgotten.”