18. Adrianos
Adrianos
“Make sure she’s taken care of.”
Evander doesn’t ask who, because he’s been with me long enough to know that when I call after dark with three words and no greeting, there’s only ever one thing it’s about.
I’m at the office window, the city laid out below it the same as every night for fifteen years, and tonight it looks like nothing, lights on a grid, money moving under glass.
“The daughter,” I say anyway, because Evander deserves the rest of it even without asking. “Petros’s girl. Whatever she needs gets covered, tuition, the apartment, anything sitting on her father’s name that’s about to become her problem. Quietly. No note, no name, nothing that traces back here.”
“Done.” A pause, then the careful pitch Evander gets when he’s deciding whether to say a thing. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
I end the call, and the quiet that follows isn’t one I usually let sit.
I’m not a man who comes apart. I haven’t, not for the woman I lost over a decade ago, not for my parents, not for Nikos, not in any way another person could point at and name.
I process, and then I move on to the next problem.
That’s the whole architecture of how I’ve survived everything that’s tried to take me apart, and it’s holding tonight too, technically, because I’m standing here breathing and the city’s still down there and nothing in me has split open.
But Petros is dead because he came to me. I didn’t pull a trigger. I didn’t give an order. OB6 did this, the same hand that’s been signing my name to the wreckage for years, and there’s a version of tonight where that’s the whole of it, where the blood belongs to the people who spilled it.
That version doesn’t hold up. If OB6 hadn’t gotten to him first, I would have, the moment he stopped being useful and started being a risk.
I wouldn’t have lost an hour over it. The only difference between the men who killed him and me is timing, and timing doesn’t mean anything to a man with a hole in his head and a daughter who lost her father.
The door opens behind me. I don’t turn, because I know her step by now, quick and a little uneven, like three things are competing for her attention and her feet are getting whatever’s left.
“Hey.” Elena’s voice, quieter than this morning, none of the speed she’s usually running at. “I’m not going to ask if you’re okay, because I already know what you’ll say, and we’ll both have to sit through the part where you say it.”
“I’m fine.”
“See, there it is, right on schedule.” She crosses to stand beside me at the window, arms crossed, looking at the same lights I’ve been looking at.
“I just didn’t want you up here by yourself tonight.
That’s the whole reason I came. Not an audit, not a follow-up question, nothing about this morning. Just that.”
I turn from the window, and she’s closer than I expected, close enough that the city behind her blurs and she’s the only thing left sharp. “I’d have done it,” I confess. “If they hadn’t gotten to him first, eventually I would have, and I wouldn’t have agonized over it. That’s the truth.”
“But you didn’t do it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say harder than I mean it, and I don’t soften it, because softening it would be its own lie.
“Whether my hand pulled the trigger or someone else’s, whether I gave the order or just made it inevitable over lunch, it’s the same blood.
I’ve told myself for twenty years there’s a line between what I do and what happens because of what I do.
But there’s no line. There’s one long stretch of red with my name on it somewhere, and Petros is on it now too, whether I put him there or just left the door open. ”
She doesn’t argue, but instead, her palm comes up to the side of my face, warm against skin that’s been cold since the call with Evander, and I lean into it before deciding to, the kind of motion a man makes toward the only warm thing in a room he didn’t know was cold until it walked in.
“I’m not going to tell you that’s not true,” she says quietly. “Because I think it is, and I think you’ve known it longer than tonight. But I’m not letting you stand here with all of it by yourself either. Grief and guilt don’t cancel out just because you feel both of them.”
“You’re looking for something that doesn’t exist. I’m not the person you think I am.”
“I’m well aware of that. Finding things that I shouldn’t know about is basically a hobby of mine at this point.
” Her thumb slowly moves along my jaw, and the knot that’s been sitting in my chest since the headline this morning eases, just enough that I feel the breath come easier.
“I just don’t want you alone with this. That’s the whole point.
I said about four hundred extra words around it because apparently, I can’t help myself, but that’s it. You don’t have to be alone with it.”
I don’t answer with words. Nothing I have would say it better than she just did, and for once I don’t reach for the charm, the version of myself that knows what to say in any room, because this isn’t a room I have or want a script for.
I pull her in instead, my hand at the back of her neck, and she comes easily, like she’d been waiting for exactly this but hadn’t wanted to ask.
She kisses me first. It’s slow and with no banter underneath it, just her mouth against mine and her hands sliding up to my shoulders.
“For the record,” she murmurs against my mouth, “I came in here to deliver another heartfelt apology, and you’ve derailed the entire thing with your face.”
“My face didn’t do anything.”
“Your face has been doing a lot since I walked in. I’m extremely perceptive; it’s the whole reason you hired me.” She pulls back an inch, eyes moving over me. “You’re allowed to want something other than the conspiracy tonight. As your accountant, I’m telling you it’s permitted.”
“Is that your professional opinion?”
“Sit down before you fall down, Kallistratos.” She gives me a small push toward the chair, and the second I drop into it, she’s already climbing into my lap, one knee finding the cushion, then the other, testing the leather. “There. Now you’re my problem instead of the window’s.”
“That must be the least romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“You’ll survive.” She’s smiling when she says it, settling into my lap, knees braced on either side of my thighs, hands resting on my shoulders, weight not fully committed yet. She pulls back enough to look at me, hair falling forward. “Is this okay? I know today’s been. I know what today’s been.”
“Elena.” Just her name, and I watch it land, her breath catching slightly. “Yes.”
She kisses me again, slower this time, and I let my hands move down her sides to the hem of her shirt, pulling it over her head.
She shakes her hair loose after, and I get one second to look at her in the lamplight before reaching for her bra, getting it open, dropping it over the chair’s arm.
Her chest rises fast, and I lean in, taking one nipple between my lips, working it with my tongue, and her hands fly into my hair, gripping, her spine arching to push closer.
“Okay,” she breathes. “That’s a good start. That’s an excellent start, keep doing exactly that.”
I switch sides, and her hips grind down on their own, no decision in it, just her body chasing the feeling, and I can feel the heat of her even through both layers still between us. My hands find her ass, pulling her in tighter, and she groans low, forehead dropping to the top of my head.
“You’re killing me with the bra thing alone,” she says, voice unsteady. “I’m filing a complaint about your competence levels.”
“Take it up with management.”
“You are management.”
“Then it’s noted and ignored.”
I get my hands at her waistband, and she lifts enough for me to drag her leggings down, half standing to get them and her underwear free, kicking them aside, nearly clipping the desk lamp on the way.
Then she’s back in my lap, bare from the waist down, and I can feel the heat of her right through my pants.
“You’re staring,” she says.
“Tracking. Different thing.”
“That’s a distinction you invented to keep doing it.”
“Possibly.” I get a hand between us, and she’s slick, has been for a while, and I drag two fingers through her slow, feeling her hips press into the touch before she’s decided to let them. The sound she makes is sharp, involuntary, and her hands grip harder.
“Not fair,” she manages. “You barely move your hand, and my whole nervous system just gives up. There should be a warning label.”
“I’ll have one printed.”
“Please don’t, I don’t want this on paper.” But her hips are already rolling against my hand, chasing it, and I work her pussy like that, in slow circles, until she’s gripping my wrist, not to stop me, but just to have something to hold.
“Up,” I tell her, and she lifts enough for me to open my pants, and when my cock is free she looks down between us and exhales hard through her nose.
“Every time,” she mutters. “Every single time, like my body’s never seen it before and is shocked all over again.”
“Your body’s got good instincts.”
“My body’s an idiot, but go on.”
I lift her with one hand and guide myself into position with the other, the head of my cock pressed against her entrance, soaked already, and she lets out a short breath at just that, like the contact alone is enough to take something out of her.
She sinks down slow, taking me inch by inch, her whole body tightening around the stretch of it, nails biting into my shoulders hard enough I’ll feel it tomorrow. By the time she’s fully seated, her forehead’s against mine, and she’s breathing like she’s run somewhere.
“Okay,” she breathes. “There it is. Hello again.”
“Hello.”
“Don’t be charming right now. I’m adjusting to a life-altering amount of you, and you’re being charming; it’s very distracting.”
“My apologies.” I’m not sorry, and she hears it, laughing breathlessly, the sound trailing into a moan when she rolls her hips and finds the angle that stops both of us cold for a second.
She starts to move, slow, riding me with her hands braced on my shoulders, and I let her set the pace, my hands at her hips steadying rather than directing.
The drag of her, tight and slick, gripping with every roll, has my jaw locked, and I watch her face, her eyes going heavy, her mouth falling open on a breath she doesn’t finish.
Her hips find a rhythm and lose it and find it again, small adjustments she’s making without seeming to know she’s making them, like her body’s still working out the angle that fits best and reporting back in real time.
Every few rolls, she catches herself doing it, and her eyes flick to mine, checking, and every time she finds me already watching.
“Stop doing that,” she breathes, not stopping.
“Doing what?”
“Watching me figure it out. It’s distracting.” But her hips don’t slow; if anything, they pick up, like getting caught makes it better instead of worse, and I feel her thighs tighten against mine, feel the small catch in her breath every time she finds the spot that does the most.
“More,” she says, frustration creeping in. “I can’t get the angle from here; I need—”
“Up.” I get my hands under her thighs and stand, her still wrapped around me, still seated, and I turn and set her down on the edge of the desk, papers scattering, a pen rolling off and hitting the floor that neither of us looks at.
“The desk,” she says, eyes wide. “We’re doing the desk. This whole office needs an inventory after tonight.”
“I’ll have it cleaned.”
“Not the reassurance you think it is.” But she’s already leaning back on her hands, hips tilting, and I push back into her from this angle, deeper, and whatever she was going to say dissolves into a long sound she doesn’t try to catch.
I get a hand flat against her stomach, pressing her back, and start moving, harder, and the new angle has her gripping the desk’s edge with both hands, head falling back, curls spilling over papers I’ll find creased tomorrow and won’t care.
Every thrust drives a raw sound out of her, nothing dry left in it.
“God, right there,” she gets out. “Don’t stop, please don’t stop—”
I don’t. I can feel her getting close, the way she tightens around me on every other stroke, her hips losing rhythm and just chasing instead.
“Turn over,” I say, and she blinks, dazed, then understands, twisting to get her knees under her on the desk, bracing on her forearms. I get behind her and push back in, and the sound she makes into her own arm is muffled and helpless.
This angle is deeper still, and I can see everything, the stretch of her taking me, her back arching to meet each thrust. I get one hand in her hair, holding rather than pulling, the other at her hip, and move with no patience left in either of us.
“There,” she chokes out. “There, don’t move, don’t change anything, just like that—”
I give her exactly that, same angle, same depth, again and again, and I feel her come apart, arms shaking under her, clenching around me in waves that get longer with every stroke, until she breaks completely, a sound tearing out of her with nothing held back, and I follow her, hips pressed flush, buried as deep as I can get, filling her, forehead dropping between her shoulder blades while we both shake through the end of it.
Neither of us moves for a long moment. I can feel her heart under my hand where it’s spread against her back, slowing gradually, and my own breath isn’t steady either, not for once.
“Okay,” she says eventually, voice wrecked, muffled against the desk.
“That helped. Filing it under helped.” A pause, quieter, something more serious threading under the usual dryness.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think the blood’s only yours tonight.
I think some of it’s mine now too. Just wanted you to know that, in case the accounting felt lonely. ”
I don’t answer right away. I just stay there, my chest against her back, the city still moving below us, and for the first time since the call I’m not thinking about Petros, or the blood, or the line that doesn’t exist. I’m just here, with her, and for now that’s enough.