Chapter 20 Bastian
BASTIAN
smoke point: /?smōk ?point/: noun
Back at my apartment, I strip off my running shorts and step into the shower. I crank the water as hot as it’ll go. Steam fills the glass enclosure, but it can’t wash away the image of Eliana standing on that sidewalk, drowning in oversized cotton and looking like everything I never knew I wanted.
Zeke’s words echo in my skull: Sometimes, people just want to be with you.
I press my forehead against the cool tile. The problem isn’t that I don’t understand the concept; the problem is that I understand it too well. Being with someone means letting them see the parts of you that aren’t carefully curated for public consumption. It means risk.
And I left risk behind the night I cradled my brother’s broken, bleeding body in the middle of an ocean of black ice as a mangled car burned behind us.
Once I step out of the shower, I sit down at my home office desk and try to work. I’ve got Project Olympus financials spread across my dining table—investor reports, permit applications, construction timelines, vendor contracts, blah blah fucking boring blah.
But I can’t focus on a goddamn word. Might as well be hieroglyphics for all the sense they’re making. Revenue projections blur into construction costs blur into Eliana’s messy bun cascading down the sides of her face.
I can’t stop thinking about that. Nor those goddamn sweatpants or that goddamn dimple in her cheek or, worse yet, the goddamn smell of her goddamn mother’s goddamn apartment.
That stench—stale boxed wine and Glade PlugIns and abject depression—is something I’ve spent fifteen years and several million dollars trying to forget.
Fuck, that smell. Might as well call it Eau de Broken Dreams. It’s the olfactory equivalent of a time machine, shooting me back to our first apartment. To Mom trying to cover the scent of mold with those toxic air fresheners that gave Aleksei migraines.
She’d buy them in bulk from the dollar store, convinced that quantity could substitute for quality. As if enough “Mountain Breeze” could transform our roach-infested shithole into something respectable.
It couldn’t. Nothing could. Not the air fresheners, not Mom’s many jobs, not Aleksei’s increasingly dangerous “side hustles.” The issue is that the reek of poverty isn’t just physical—it’s existential, too.
It seeps into your bones and your dreams, and nothing Glade has ever manufactured can get it out of you.
And Eliana… Christ, Eliana’s still trapped in it. Still dancing to her mother’s tune, hemorrhaging money into a black hole of need that will never be satisfied.
I recognize the pattern because I lived it—right up until I didn’t. I chose Sage over Mom and respectability over Aleksei.
All it cost me was the last of my soul.
That was a fine price to pay, in my eyes. I’d rather be the kind of cold that keeps you alive instead of the kind of warm that kills you slowly.
Eliana will learn that lesson. Eventually. Or she won’t, and she’ll go blind and broke trying to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.
Either way, it’s not my problem.
You know what? Fuck this. I can’t sit here and wallow in stupid, useless, circular thoughts.
I grab my keys and head for the door. The Project Olympus site is a twenty-minute drive—far enough to clear my head and close enough that I can pretend this is a legitimate business need and not me running from the ghost of poverty and the specter of whatever the fuck Eliana Hunter is doing to my head.
The site sits on the corner of Randolph and Clinton. On weekends, it’s usually deserted, since union rules mean most of the crews are off. Today, though, there’s a pickup truck in the lot. Moretti Construction stamped on the side. I frown.
I park and let myself in through the service entrance. The smell of sawdust and fresh paint hits me immediately. It’s a good smell. The smell of things being built, of vision becoming reality. A hell of a lot better than Mountain Breeze, that’s for fucking sure.
The dining rooms are taking shape beautifully.
The main space has thirty-foot windows that’ll flood the room with natural light during lunch service, then transform into mirrors reflecting candlelight at dinner.
The private rooms are intimate without feeling cramped.
And the wine cellar is a work of art. Climate-controlled, naturally, with custom shelving that’ll hold ten thousand bottles and a tasting area that makes me want to quit the restaurant business and become a sommelier.
But the kitchen. The kitchen is why I’m here.
It’s the heart of the entire operation. Twenty thousand square feet of carefully planned workspace, from the garde manger station to the pastry kitchen to the main line where my chefs will perform their nightly ballet. I’ve spent three years designing this space, obsessing over every last detail.
I find Frank Moretti standing in the middle of it. He’s scowling up at the ductwork with the expression of a man who’s just discovered his dog ate his homework.
“Mr. Hale!” He startles when he sees me, which is interesting. Frank’s been in construction for thirty years. Not much rattles him. “Didn’t expect to see you here on a Saturday.”
“I could say the same about you, Frank.”
He shifts his weight, and I notice he’s holding a tablet with what looks like HVAC schematics pulled up. “Just doing some weekend inspections. Quality control, you know how it is.”
I do know how it is. I also know bullshit when I smell it, and Frank Moretti is currently producing it in industrial quantities.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He shuffles in place. “Nothing’s wrong, exactly—”
“Frank.” I keep my voice level, but there’s steel underneath it. “I’ve been in this business long enough to know the difference between a social visit and a problem. Which is this?”
He sighs, the sound of a man who knows he’s about to ruin someone’s weekend. “We found an issue during the systems testing yesterday. The ventilation in the truffle oil prep station.”
That’s a kick to the nuts on a day I’ve already been kicked plenty, but I keep my face neutral. “Go on.”
“The specifications you approved—they’re not adequate for the volume and heat requirements you’re planning.
” Frank pulls up a schematic on his tablet and points a thick finger to a section of ductwork.
“The high-heat processing, the amount of oil being prepared, the specific ventilation needs for that cooking method—none of it was properly accounted for in the original HVAC design. We started testing the systems under load yesterday, and the ventilation can’t handle it.
You’d be looking at fire hazards out the wazoo.
It’s a code violation waiting to happen, brother. ”
“How bad?” I ask.
“Bad enough that we can’t pass inspection without fixing it.
We’re talking about rerouting major ductwork at a minimum.
At worst, we’ll have to upgrade the exhaust capacity and probably reinforce some of the structural supports to handle the additional weight.
” He scrolls through more blueprints. “I’ve got my HVAC guy running numbers, but we’re looking at around two hundred grand to fix it properly. Maybe more.”
Two hundred thousand dollars. In the grand scheme of Project Olympus’s budget, it’s manageable. Painful, but manageable. “What’s that gonna do to the timeline?”
“Tacks on two weeks if everything goes smooth. Could be more if we find other issues once we open up the ductwork. And we usually find other issues.”
My first instinct is to put my fist through a wall. Or, failing that, put it through Frank’s face. That’s the Izotov blood in me, the ghosts of my pasts screaming in my ear that violence will fix this shit.
And fuck, maybe once upon a time, that’s exactly what I would’ve done. God knows I’ve roared in the faces of enough underlings until they agreed to bend time and space to carry out my demands.
But something in me has shifted. It’s subtle but undeniable. A fist no longer feels like my best choice.
I could blame Aleksei. But I know the real culprit for this change: Eliana.
I don’t like it one bit.
“Do it,” I tell Frank. I’m suddenly exhausted. “Whatever needs to be done to make it right. Get me the revised estimates by Tuesday.”
“You sure? I know the timeline’s tight—”
“The timeline’s fucked if we build something that doesn’t work. Better to do it right than do it fast.”
He gives me a strange look, but nods. “Yes, sir, Mr. Hale.”
I leave the construction site in a worse mood than when I arrived. I don’t want to go home—Sage will be getting back from physical therapy soon, and I need a few hours of silence before my little brother starts needling me.
So I tell myself I’ll just swing by the office to check on a few things. It’s a lie, and I know it’s a lie, but I’m getting really good at lying to myself these days.
I say privet to Jovanni on my way into the elevator, then ride up in silence. The doors open onto darkness. Lights out, the conference rooms shadowed, everything shut down for the weekend.
Except.
From where I stand, I can see into the cubicle area. Most of the floor is dark, but there’s one lamp still glowing.
Eliana’s desk.
She must have left it on when I rushed her out for the investor dinner. I almost tell myself I’m just being energy-conscious, just turning off an unnecessary light, as I walk down to her cubicle.
But that would just be lying again.
Her space is small. Depressing, really, in the way all cubicles are depressing. But she’s made it bearable with small touches.
A photo of her and her friend Yasmin laughing at some restaurant, both of them mid-bite of something that’s dripping sauce. A sticky note on her monitor that says “You can do hard things.” The Garfield mug I’ve seen her drink from every morning.
I find myself looking through the files on her desk. Not snooping, exactly. Just… understanding. Trying to see the world from her perspective, from this cramped little space where she spends seventy hours a week making my vision into reality.
At the bottom of the stack of papers is a small spiral notepad, the kind you’d use for grocery lists or phone messages. But this isn’t mundane. At the top, in her handwriting, it says “90 DAYS” and beneath it is a list:
- See the sunrise from the lakefront
- Watch Casablanca (and actually pay attention this time)
- Visit the Art Institute before I can’t see the paintings anymore
- Remember what Mom looked like when she smiled
- See the city lights from somewhere high up
- Stand in the rain and feel it on my face
Each item is a small dream. Achingly simple, unbearably urgent. Things most people take for granted, experiences that cost nothing but mean everything when you’re counting down to darkness.
I drop down in her chair without thinking. From here, I can see directly into my office window. This is what she looks at every day. This is her view: my light burning late into the night, my silhouette moving behind glass.
I recognize this feeling. It’s the same protective instinct I have for Sage—that bone-deep need to shield someone from harm, to carry their burdens, to make their world safer.
But with Eliana, it’s also something more.
Something I’ve been refusing to name because naming it makes it real, and real things can hurt you.
Then the fear crashes in, cold and familiar.
My track record with people I try to protect is shit.
Sage, paralyzed because I was driving too fast and too cocky.
My mother, dead giving birth to a baby she couldn’t afford, while I was at culinary school, too focused on my own future to check on hers.
Even Aleksei himself—he became a monster partially because I couldn’t save him from that life. I wasn’t enough.
Everyone I love, everyone I try to protect, ends up broken.
What if caring about Eliana puts her at risk? What if my darkness ruins her the way it ruins everything else?
She’s already losing her sight. She already has a mother who bleeds her dry emotionally and financially.
She doesn’t need the additional burden of Bastian Hale’s damage.
The decision takes shape: I’ll keep my distance. Professional, cordial, nothing more. I’ll ensure she gets everything the contract promises. Health care, money, freedom.
And then, in eighty-six days, she’ll be free.
Free of Hale Hospitality.
Free of Project Olympus.
Free of me.
It’s safer this way. For all of us.
I stand, straightening her desk, making sure everything is exactly as she left it. The files go back in their precise positions. The pens line up just so. I turn off her lamp, plunging the cubicle into darkness.
But as I’m leaving, my hand moves of its own accord.
I take the notepad. It’s a small theft, but an ugly one. A piece of her I have no right to keep.
As I walk away, I look down at the stolen notepad in my hand. “Eighty-six days,” I whisper aloud. “I can keep her safe for eighty-six days. Then she’ll be free of me.”
I tuck it in my pocket and walk out. The elevator descends through the dark building, and with each floor, I tell myself the same lie again.
It’s better this way.
By the time I reach the lobby, I almost believe it.