The lock clicked shut, but Karl remained leaning against the door, the warm ceramic plate a stark contrast to the cold dread and disbelief icing his veins. Dr. Elara Vogel. The name echoed in the silent apartment. A doctor. It fit. It fit perfectly.
How could she not know him?
He replayed the encounter in his mind, dissecting every micro-expression, every flicker in her warm brown eyes. There had been curiosity, a neighborly politeness, but not a shred of recognition. Not even the faintest hint of unease that often accompanies a face from a forgotten past.
He pushed off from the door and carried the plate to his small fold-out table. He lifted the cloth. The slice of Apfelkuchen was golden-brown, studded with chunks of apple, dusted with sugar. It looked humble and perfect. A fragment of a normal life offered by a woman who lived one.
He found a fork. The rational part of his mind, the part that had kept him alive, screamed at him. Poison. A neurotoxin. A delayed-action trigger. It was exactly the kind of elegant, cruel trap Nightingale would devise.
But the memory of her face—the genuine, uncalculated warmth in her smile—overrode the paranoia. This wasn't a move in their game. This was blind, absurd chance.
He took a bite.
The flavor exploded on his tongue. Sweet, tart, cinnamony, with a buttery, crumbly crust. It was sublime. It was the best thing he had tasted in years, perhaps ever. It tasted of kindness. Of home. A sensation so alien it was almost painful.
He ate the entire slice, standing there at the table, each bite a quiet rebellion against the sterile, survivalist existence he had endured. He wasn't just eating cake; he was consuming the proof that the woman across the hall was real, that her goodness was real, and that somehow, against all odds, their paths had collided again.
He set the fork down on the empty plate, a profound sense of calm settling over him. The questions remained—how, why—but they were secondary now.
The primary, overwhelming feeling was a desire so powerful it shook him to his core.
He wanted to see her again.
Not to question her. Not to unravel the mystery. Just to see her. To be in the presence of that calm certainty, that unshakable normalcy. She was a living flame, and he, a creature of shadows, found himself instinctively, dangerously drawn to the light.
He looked at the empty plate, then across the room at his door, as if he could see through it to hers.
The hunt for Nightingale was still his purpose. The vengeance was still his fuel.
But suddenly, for the first time since he could remember, he had something else. A reason to be Matthias Vogel that had nothing to do with hiding, and everything to do with a beautiful doctor and her apple cake. He wanted to hear her knock on his door again. And he knew, with a terrifying certainty, that he would find a reason to knock on hers.