The woman in black disappears into the crowd, swallowed by a sea of men with too much money and women who think power is something they can seduce their way into.
I don’t move.
I don’t follow.
But I feel the shift she left in her wake, like a ripple in water that hasn’t yet settled.
Lorenzo glances at me. He noticed her too. Of course he did. He’s trained to catch details, to recognize threats before they become problems.
“Want me to look into her?” he asks, keeping his voice neutral.
I roll the whiskey across my tongue, letting the fire sit in my throat before swallowing.
“No.”
Lorenzo raises a brow. He doesn’t question me, but he wants to.
I should let it go. I should let her go.
But something doesn’t sit right.
She wasn’t just another woman looking for attention.
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She wasn’t a socialite playing dress-up in a world she didn’t belong to.
She was looking for something.
Or someone.
And I have a feeling I won’t like the answer.
I don’t think about her again.
Not until three nights later.
The crash comes first—a violent screech of metal against pavement that slices through the night, sharp and brutal.
I react before I think, pushing open the car door as Lorenzo slams on the brakes.
The street is dark, washed in the cold glow of a single flickering streetlamp.
And there, crumpled against the wreckage of a shattered motorcycle, is her.
The woman in black.
Blood smears across her forehead, dripping down the bridge of her nose. One of her arms is twisted wrong, bent at an angle no arm should ever bend. Her chest rises and falls too fast, her breath ragged and broken.
I take a step forward.
Then another.
She looks up.
And she smiles.
The kind of smile that shouldn’t exist in a moment like this.
Something inside me—something cold and instinctual—whispers that this isn’t an accident.
This is something else.
Something deliberate.
She lets out a shuddering breath, blinking slow and lazy, like she’s about to lose consciousness.
I crouch beside her, gripping her chin between my fingers, forcing her eyes to stay open.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Her lips part, but she doesn’t answer.
Instead, she laughs—a weak, rasping sound.
And then she says the first words that will ruin me:
“Do you believe in fate, Cassian?”
The way she says my name—
like she already owns it.
Like she already owns me.