My nose is bleeding.
I notice when I reach up to touch my face and my fingers come back red. Not a lot. Just enough to be annoying. I find a handkerchief in my bag, press it to my upper lip, and sit there blinking while my brain catches up.
"Gabby." Clarke's already turned around, both hands on Gabby's face. "Hey. Look at me. Are you okay?"
Gabby blinks slowly. "Yeah — yeah I'm fine."
"You sure?"
"I said I'm fine, Clarke, oh my God." She bats her hands away. "Is Benny okay?"
I nod. Press the handkerchief harder.
"Okay." Clarke exhales. "Everybody's okay."
We sit for a second, just the three of us breathing.
My wolf is still doing that thing — that locked, motionless alertness from the end of the last block, coiled somewhere behind my ribs. Still. Waiting. I don't know what it's waiting for and I don't want to.
Then the yelling starts.
"Are you serious right now?!" The driver is already out of the other car, gesturing at Clarke's side. "You stupid — what is wrong with you women, do you know how to drive?!"
Clarke winds down her window very slowly. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me! Look at what you've done to this car—"
"What we've done?" Gabby's head snaps up. "You bumped into us."
"I don't want to hear it! You women never look where you're going."
"Oh my God," Gabby says. "Why is he yelling so much?"
I'm already opening my door.
"Benny—" Clarke starts.
I grab my shades off the seat, slide them on, and climb out. My white dress is wrinkled, one boot heel scraping the asphalt as I straighten up and face him.
"Can you shut up?" Completely calm. "Like genuinely, you sound so daft."
He turns to me. Looks me up and down in that specific way. "Who do you think you're talking to—"
"You. Your careless self crashed into our car and you are paying for every single scratch."
"Pay for what? You stupid little—"
He steps toward me and I don't move. Not even slightly. His hand comes up and I slap it clean out of the air before it gets anywhere near my face.
The sound cuts through everything.
Clarke is out of the car. Gabby right behind her.
"Were you just about to hit her?" Clarke is already between us.
"Touch her again," Gabby says, voice dropping to that quiet register that is somehow worse than yelling, "and I promise you won't like what happens."
The driver opens his mouth.
The other car door opens.
Everyone goes still.
He steps out slowly, straightening his jacket. Taking in the street, the small crowd forming, the whole situation — like he's assessing rather than entering. Unhurried. The way dominant wolves move through a space that already belongs to them.
Then I clock his face, and the crowd does too — Amasten, oh my God, is that actually him — and none of that matters because my wolf has just gone from still to absolutely rigid inside me, locked on him like a compass finding north, and I have absolutely no idea what to do with that so I do nothing.
I keep my shades on. I keep my face empty.
"Your driver was rude and the damages need to be covered," I say. Not to him specifically. To the situation. "That's it."
"How much?"
He's looking at me. Not at Clarke. Not at the car. At me, with an expression I can't fully read and don't trust, like he's trying to place something he almost recognizes.
From somewhere in the crowd — Amasten Zakiel, wait, is that actually—
Gabby grabs my arm. "Benny—"
"His driver was rude and the damages need to be covered," I repeat. "That's it."
He turns to his driver. "Apologize to them."
The driver goes rigid. "Sir—"
"Apologize. Then clear your things out of the car because you're fired."
I almost cringe. Like that fixes the public humiliation already happening around us.
The apology is stiff and I half-listen. The crowd is getting bigger. Phones are up. I can feel the paparazzi before I see them — that prickling at the back of my neck I grew up learning to recognize.
This is going to be everywhere.
"Gabby," Amasten says, turning. "Who does the car belong to?"
Gabby blinks. "How do you know my name?"
He waits.
"…Me," she says. "I own the car."
"Account Details?"
She gives it. He transfers right there on the street, phone in hand, same unbothered energy — like wiring ten thousand euros to strangers on a Sunday is just a thing that happens. Maybe for him it is. Maybe it's a performance. Either way my wolf doesn't care about the money.
It's still locked on him and I'm still pretending that's not happening.
He walks over anyway.
Up close—
Up close there's a scent. Warm. Something underneath the expensive cologne that I recognize the way you recognize a word in a language you were told you'd forgotten. My wolf lurches toward it and I slam a wall down so fast my jaw tightens.
No.
I take off my shades, look at him directly, and say, "Thank you for the transfer."
Then I turn on my heel and get back in the car.
Gabby slides in. Clarke gets in last. Three doors — clack, clack, clack — and then the street muffled behind glass.
"That," Gabby breathes, "was Amasten Zakiel."
"I know."
"Benny, he was looking at you like—"
"I know."
"He sent me ten thousand euro—"
"Gabby, I know." I press the handkerchief to my nose again even though it stopped bleeding. Something to do with my hands. Something to do while I quietly, methodically dismantle whatever just happened behind my ribs and put it somewhere I don't have to look at it.
"Oh God, it's going to be all over everything." I stare out the window. "I can already feel Alex trying to call me."
Clarke pulls back into traffic. "Just when I thought we were almost through it—"
"It wasn't even our fault this time," Gabby says.
"Does that matter?" Clarke exhales hard. "By tonight they'll have a whole story built around ten seconds of footage."
We go back and forth like that for a stretch, decompressing, Gabby checking her cash app, me watching Trieste slide past the window looking beautiful and completely indifferent.
Then Gabby goes quiet.
"What," Clarke says.
Gabby turns the screen around.
The headline is already up. Eleven minutes ago, it was already spreading. The photo is from the street — me in my white dress and shades, handkerchief in hand, the crash visible behind me.
BENITOVA MARCEL CAUSES SCENE IN TRIESTE STREETS — AMASTEN ZAKIEL'S VEHICLE DAMAGED IN ALTERCATION WITH CEO'S STEPDAUGHTER
"His vehicle. Damaged." I stare at it. "Like we drove into him."
"They flipped it," Clarke says quietly.
My phone starts ringing.
I already know who it is. And I already know what she's going to say — that this is exactly what happens when I move through the human world like I'm not what I am. That the Marcel name is not a costume. That eventually the two worlds I've been keeping apart are going to collide and she won't always be there to manage the wreckage.
She's not wrong. She's just never right about what I should do instead.
Still doesn't mean I am touching this phone.