For a moment, the silence stretched, taut as wire. Lena stood in his kitchen’s dim light, arms folded, chin tilted in defiance. She didn’t flinch from his gaze.

Elias’s smirk lingered, but his chest tightened. She doesn’t know how close she is.

“You should go,” he said finally, tone even but softer than he meant. “It’s late.”

Her brows arched. “That’s it? No explanation? Just shut the door and pretend I didn’t hear anything?”

“Exactly that.”

She huffed out a laugh, sharp with frustration. “You’re infuriating.”

“Safer that way,” he said, the same words as before. This time they came out quieter, as though he meant them for himself more than her.

She shook her head and reached for her jacket on the counter. “You’re hiding something, Elias.”

“I’m hiding everything,” he said before he could stop himself.

Her hazel eyes caught the slip. She froze for a beat, lips parting like she wanted to ask more—but she didn’t. Instead, she pulled the jacket on and headed for the door.

“Goodnight, neighbor,” she said, though it sounded less like a farewell and more like a warning.

The door clicked shut behind her, leaving the apartment hollow, the silence ringing.

Elias ran a hand over his jaw, exhaling slow. He moved to the kitchen window and caught his reflection in the black glass. Same storm-gray eyes, same sharp features, same face he’d worn like a mask for decades. But it never felt like his.

D’Ardenne. The name was an anchor and a chain. Generations of secrets carved into his bloodline. His father had taught him leverage before language. His first lessons were not in numbers or history, but silence, codes, the art of listening without ever speaking.

By seventeen, he was an asset. By twenty-one, an operator. By twenty-three, a killer. Not because he wanted to—want had nothing to do with it—but because there was no choice.

Now, at thirty-five, he was supposed to be a ghost. Invisible. Untouchable.

But Lena had seen him. Not just seen—she’d looked. And that was dangerous. For her. For him. For both of them.

His phone buzzed on the counter, the vibration loud in the quiet. A single encrypted message lit the screen:

“12:03 compromised. Burn it. Leave no trace.”

Elias typed back, Understood, though his chest tightened with the weight of it.

When the message vanished, he turned again toward the hallway. The door across from his—1408—felt alive, pulling at him like gravity.

A problem. A temptation. Maybe both.

And the worst part—he wasn’t sure which one scared him more.

The message still glowed in his mind: 12:03 compromised. Burn it. Leave no trace.

Elias moved with practiced precision. He crossed to the black briefcase on his desk, turned the key, and opened it. Inside lay tools that didn’t belong in a neighbor’s apartment: a compact burner phone, a set of lock picks, a coil of fine wire, and a matte-black pistol with the serial numbers filed clean.

His hand lingered on the pistol, but he pushed it aside. Tonight wasn’t about confrontation. Tonight was about erasure.

He packed only what he needed.

By the time he left the apartment, the building’s hallways were silent. The elevator hummed as it carried him down, past floor after floor until it stopped at twelve.

The corridor here smelled faintly of copper and something acrid, a scent that clung to the back of the throat. Apartment 1203 waited at the end of the hall, its door closed, a single strip of light seeping beneath it.

Elias slipped on a pair of gloves and pulled a slim glass vial from his pocket. Inside swirled a clear liquid, harmless to most eyes, lethal to anyone who knew its signature. He set the vial back, steadied himself.

This wasn’t a confrontation. This was cleanup.

His fingers brushed the doorframe, feeling for the hidden latch. A faint click answered him, as if the lock knew him by name. The door opened just enough to let him in.

The darkness inside swallowed him.

And then the door closed, leaving the hallway silent again.