"Come, lay beside me," Ava said, and Azazel found himself blinking, utterly flustered by the words.
His breath hitched in the hollow of his throat. The sentence felt like both a command and a confession—a gentle invitation wrapped in gravity he wasn't prepared for.
Azazel—whose very name carried weight in dim rooms, in digital spaces where silence was law and shadows were power—felt suddenly small, startled. Like a machine unplugged. Like an armorer stripped of his armor.
Despite being one of the Mafia boys and a once–number-one hacker, Azazel was real. He wasn't a playboy. He wasn't a pretender.
It was strange to think of him away from the reputation that shadowed his every step: the careful quiet of his clothes, the sharp line of his jaw, the way his fingers once moved with the precision of code and the hardness of survival.
Here, in this lamp-lit room, holding nothing but the impulse to stay close to someone he loved, he was nothing but human.
