Chapter 4
Vance
The drive took fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes of dark roads and silence, the truck's headlights cutting through a world that had gone quiet. Tobias sat in the passenger seat with his eyes fixed on the window, watching nothing pass by.
I didn't try to fill the silence. I'd learned long ago that some people needed space to process. You couldn't rush it. You couldn't talk them through trauma before they were ready. You just had to be there and wait.
My apartment was on the second floor of a building that had seen better decades.
Nothing fancy—a one-bedroom unit in a complex where nobody asked questions and the rent was cheap enough to pay in cash.
I'd picked it for anonymity, for the kind of forgettability that was useful when you needed a place that didn't officially exist.
I parked in my usual spot, killed the engine, and sat for a moment with my hands on the wheel.
What have you done?
The question had been circling for hours, but I'd been too busy managing the crisis to let it land. Now, in the quiet of my truck with a billionaire's runaway son two feet away, there was nowhere left to dodge.
I'd hidden a missing person from his own family. Lied to my colleagues. Misdirected a search I was supposed to lead. If the Langfords found out—when they found out—my career would be over. Fifteen years of building a reputation, thrown away for a stranger with haunted eyes.
Not a stranger.
I pushed the thought away and opened my door. "Let's go."
The apartment looked worse in the middle of the night. The hallway light flickered again—I'd meant to report it for months—and the stairwell smelled faintly of mildew. I unlocked the door and flipped on the overhead light, already seeing the place through someone else's eyes.
"Spare" was a generous word for it.
A couch that had seen better decades, its cushions permanently indented from years of use.
A coffee table I'd picked up from a thrift store for twenty bucks.
A TV mounted on the wall because there wasn't room for a stand.
The kitchen held a coffee maker, a toaster, and a precarious stack of takeout menus.
A pile of laundry sat on the single chair, waiting to be folded.
No pictures. No decorations. No evidence that anyone actually lived here.
"It's not much." I heard the apology in my own voice and hated it.
Tobias stepped inside, his gaze traveling slowly across the room. The tuxedo shirt was wrinkled, sleeves still rolled up from when he'd stripped off the jacket hours ago. He looked rumpled and exhausted, nothing like the polished groom from the wedding photos.
He also looked more real than I'd ever seen him.
"It's perfect."
The words were quiet, sincere in a way that caught me off guard.
He was looking at the laundry pile with an expression that didn't make sense. Not judgment, not disgust. Something that looked almost like wonder.
"You can see everything," he said softly. "The whole apartment, right from the door. No hidden rooms. No staff lurking around corners. No one watching to see if you're doing it right."
I hadn't thought about it that way. I'd just chosen the cheapest place that met my basic requirements: clean enough, quiet enough, forgettable enough.
But looking at it now, through the eyes of someone who'd grown up in a mansion with servants in every corner, I understood.
This was freedom. Cramped and plain and imperfect freedom.
"Bedroom's through there." I nodded at the only interior door. "Bathroom's attached. You should probably take the bed."
"I can't take your bed."
"You just blew up your entire life. Take the damn bed."
His mouth curved. Not quite a smile, but the closest thing to one I'd seen from him all night. "Fine. But only because that couch looks like it might actually be a health code violation."
I glanced at the couch, which was, admittedly, held together mostly by hope and duct tape. "It has character."
"It has a spring sticking out of the armrest."
"That's the character."
This time, the curve of his lips almost resembled a smile. It transformed his face—softened the sharp edges, warmed his pale green eyes, made him look younger and more alive.
I looked away.
"I should have clean sheets in the closet," I said, moving toward the bedroom. "Let me just—"
"You don't have to." His voice stopped me. "I've already disrupted enough."
"You haven't disrupted anything."
"Vance." My name, spoken in that quiet, careful voice. "You're risking everything for me. The least I can do is make my own bed."
It was such a small thing. Such an ordinary statement. But something in the way he said it—like making a bed was a novelty, a skill he'd never had the chance to practice—made my chest tighten.
"Closet's in the bedroom. Sheets are on the top shelf."
"Thank you."
Two words, heavy with meaning neither of us wanted to examine too closely.
He disappeared into the bedroom. I stood in my living room and listened to someone else moving through my space—the creak of the closet door, the rustle of fabric.
You're in over your head.
I knew it. Had known it since the moment I found him crouched in that service corridor.
But knowing something and being able to change it were two different things.
I started a pot of coffee while Tobias dealt with the bedroom. Neither of us would be sleeping anytime soon.
By the time it finished brewing, he emerged wearing a pair of my sweatpants and an old Army t-shirt. Both were too big on him—he looked like a kid playing dress-up.
"Coffee?"
"God, yes."
I poured two cups and handed one over. He wrapped both hands around the mug like it was a lifeline, took a sip, and grimaced.
"This is terrible."
"I know."
"It might be the best coffee I've ever had."
I snorted. "That's the shock talking."
"Probably." He took another sip anyway. "I've never had bad coffee before. We always had excellent coffee. Imported beans, precise temperatures. But there was always someone watching to make sure I drank it correctly."
"How can you drink coffee incorrectly?"
"Add too much cream, apparently. Drink it in the wrong room at the wrong time of day." His smile was thin. "There are rules for everything when you're a Langford."
"You should sleep," I said. "It's been a long day."
"I don't think I can sleep."
"Try anyway. Tomorrow's going to be complicated."
He set his mug on the counter and looked at me properly for the first time since we'd arrived. Those pale green eyes held something that might have been fear, might have been gratitude, might have been something else entirely.
"Where will you be?"
"Couch."
"You can't sleep on that thing. It's torture."
"I've slept on worse."
"That's not exactly reassuring."
I almost smiled. "Go. Sleep. I'll be right here if you need anything."
For a long moment, he just looked at me. Whatever he saw in my face seemed to satisfy him, because he finally nodded and turned toward the bedroom.
He paused at the door. "Vance?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For everything."
My throat tightened. "Get some rest."
The bedroom door closed softly.
I stood in my kitchen, holding a cup of terrible coffee, and wondered how I had ended up here.
The couch was as uncomfortable as he'd predicted.
I shifted for the fourth time, trying to find a position that didn't involve the exposed spring digging into my hip. The throw blanket was too short and smelled faintly of dust. The pillow was too flat.
None of it mattered. I wasn't sleeping anyway.
I stared at the ceiling and listened to the silence. The building was quiet at this hour—no traffic noise, no neighbors arguing through thin walls. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the faint sound of someone breathing in my bedroom.
What are you doing?
I'd smuggled a billionaire's son out of a hotel during an active search. My career was probably over. If the Langfords found out where their son was hiding, they'd bury me.
And yet, when I closed my eyes, I kept seeing him crouched in that corridor. Shaking. Desperate.
Please. Please don't make me go back.
I'd seen that look before. In soldiers pushed past their limits, in men who'd given up on themselves.
Walking away hadn't been an option.
I'd deal with the consequences later. For now, I had done what needed to be done.
Morning came at 0530, as it always did.
My body didn't care that I'd been up past midnight. Fifteen years of military discipline had hardwired me to wake before dawn, and no amount of sleep deprivation could override it.
I lay still for a moment, listening. The apartment was quiet. Tobias was still asleep in my bedroom—I could hear nothing from that direction, which probably meant he was out cold.
Good. He needed the rest.
I got up and changed into running clothes as quietly as I could—
A crash came from the bedroom.
I was through the door in two seconds, calculating threats, reaching for the weapon I kept in the nightstand—
Tobias was on the floor.
Tangled in the sheets, one leg caught on the bed frame, hair sticking up in every direction. He was holding a lamp like a weapon, eyes wild with panic.
"What—who—" He squinted at me in the dim light. "Vance?"
"Who else would it be?"
"I heard someone moving around. I thought—" He lowered the lamp, looking embarrassed. "I thought someone broke in."
"I was getting ready for my run."
"Your run." He stared at me. "It's still dark outside."
"That's when I run."
"That's insane. Normal people are sleeping right now."
"I'm not normal." I leaned against the doorframe, trying not to smile at the sight he made—rumpled and confused, clutching a lamp as if it could protect him from intruders. "Go back to sleep."
"I'm awake now." He untangled himself from the sheets with as much dignity as he could muster, which wasn't much. "My heart rate is about a thousand beats per minute. Sleep is no longer an option."
"Sorry."
"You don't sound sorry."
"I'm not. But it seemed polite to say."