The tires screeched softly against the Sinclair estate's cobblestone driveway as Elias stepped out of the black car, jaw clenched, shirt half untucked, his cuffs rolled hastily.
The Naples mess had taken longer to extinguish than expected.
Greedy middlemen. Impatient suppliers. And one idiot club manager who thought he could skim without consequences.
His temple throbbed.
Kai followed him silently, for once not cracking a joke or tossing in a dig. The silence between them wasn't uncomfortable—just tired. Elias's hand was still faintly bloodied from the scuffle outside Club Aurelio. A reminder.
A reminder of who he was.
A reminder of what his world demanded.
He walked inside and tossed his coat on the armchair like it had personally offended him. Unbuttoning his collar, he poured himself a glass of water instead of something stronger—surprising even himself.
He didn't want alcohol tonight.
He didn't want noise, fire, or revenge.
He wanted—
Peace?
His hands stilled around the glass.
Leila.
The image came uninvited — her sitting in the company cafeteria, sipping chai from her thermos, eyes faraway and full of memories she never spoke of.
He shouldn't be thinking about her.
Not after what he just handled. Not when there were still bruises blooming under his shirt, and a trail of decisions that would never see daylight.
But her silence followed him louder than the gunshots in Naples.
Why the hell did it bother him that she'd avoided his gaze? That she never looked at him like the others did—
Not with admiration. Not even fear.
She looked through him sometimes.
And other times, he swore she saw right into him.
The contradiction unnerved him.
He moved toward the window, pulling aside the sheer curtain. The estate grounds were asleep under moonlight. A hush had settled, deep and old.
And still, his mind was anything but.
He remembered the way she smiled to herself while scrolling through her phone during lunch. The way she made her own food and didn't care to join the crowd. She was an island.
Unreachable.
And still, he kept circling her like a man pulled by gravity.
"You're losing it, Sinclair," he muttered, running a hand through his hair.
Kai's voice echoed in his head from earlier that day:
"You don't chase women, Elias. You avoid them like they're paperwork. But this girl… this Leila… she's cracked something in you. Admit it."
Elias had stayed silent then.
But standing here now, in the stillness of night, something inside him whispered:
She's not just different. She's dangerous.
Not because of who she was.
But because of who he could become around her.
An Extra in Her Story
The dawn broke pale and shy over the city, but Leila had already been awake for hours.
Sleep had teased her, then left without grace — leaving her eyes heavy but her mind alarmingly clear.
She stood by the window in her dorm, arms folded across her chest as she watched the street lights blink out one by one. The city was waking up, beginning again.
So would she.
Today, she would walk into that office as someone new — not with hatred or bitterness, but with something sharper.
Finality.
Last night, after the storm of her thoughts calmed into silence, she'd come to a decision. Not one born from impulse or pain, but something sobered, weighty. True.
She wasn't going to look at Elias Sinclair the way she once had — with cautious curiosity or the confused warmth that had started to flicker in quiet places of her heart.
No.
She was thankful it hadn't gone deeper. Grateful for the ache that never quite became a wound. Grateful for the part of herself that still knew how to protect what mattered.
Whatever was stirring before, whatever light he'd ignited in her without even trying — it was over.
Closed.
Folded like the final page of a chapter she didn't plan to reread.
She'd rewritten his role in her story.
Elias Sinclair wasn't the hero. Wasn't even the antagonist.
Just an extra — a passing shadow between paragraphs. One of those characters that existed to fill a scene and disappear quietly.
She let out a long breath and turned from the window.
There were papers to review. A new task assigned to her team. Sofia was back and already halfway through planning their post-work coffee break. Life was moving.
And so would she.
As she pulled her shawl around her shoulders and reached for her bag, her fingers brushed the corner of her phone.
No new notifications.
No strange dreams.
Just silence.
She preferred it that way.
Today, she would go to work.
She would sit across the glass room where Elias might pass again, behind the layers of power and silence and distance. If he looked at her, she would look away.
If he said her name, she would respond with calm professionalism.
But she would never again offer him the kind of gaze that once brimmed with wonder.
That chapter was closed.
She had written the ending herself.