Chapter 38
I woke up with my cheek pressed against the cold wood of my desk and a resolve burning in my chest that I hadn't felt in years. The clock said three in the morning, the room was dark, and the only sounds were my own breathing and the distant hum of the city outside.
But I wasn't tired anymore. I wasn't uncertain. I knew exactly what I had to do.
I stood up, grabbed my keys, and walked out of the estate without looking back.
I didn't care about the time. I didn't care that I was still wearing the same shirt from yesterday, that my hair was a mess, that I probably looked like I hadn't slept in days. I didn't care about any of it. The only thing that mattered was getting to her.
My hands were trembling on the steering wheel.
It was absurd, I had killed men without flinching, had stared down enemies who wanted me dead, had made decisions that ruined families and built empires.
But my hands were shaking now, like I was a teenager going to meet his first crush, because I was about to see her again and I had no idea what I was going to say.
I pressed on the gas and drove faster.
The streets were empty at this hour, the city asleep, the traffic lights blinking yellow.
I ran a few of them. I didn't care about that either.
Every second felt like a minute, every minute felt like an hour, and all I could think about was her face, her voice, the way she had said I regret meeting you like she was reading my eulogy.
But she wouldn't regret it forever. She was upset, she was hurt, she had every right to curse at me and cry and maybe even hit me.
But she would forgive me eventually. She had never been immune to me.
From the very first night, when she had walked into my meeting and sat in my lap like she owned me, she had never been able to stay away.
I would explain everything, and she would understand, and then I would spend the rest of my life making it up to her.
That was what I told myself as I pulled up to her building.
The street was dark and quiet, the familiar shops shuttered, the apartment windows dark. I got out of the car and walked to the entrance, my footsteps echoing on the pavement, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.
I stood in front of her door and pressed the doorbell.
Nothing.
I waited a few seconds, then pressed it again. Still nothing. She was probably asleep. It was three in the morning. She was a heavy sleeper sometimes, I remembered how she used to curl into my chest and not stir even when I moved. I knocked, softly at first, then harder.
"Elera."
No response.
I knocked again, louder this time, and called her name. "Elera, it's me. Open the door."
I was about to knock again when the door next to hers opened.
A woman peered out, somewhere in her forties, with tired eyes and messy hair and a robe pulled tight around her shoulders. She looked at me like I was the most annoying thing she had encountered in weeks.
"It's the middle of the night!" she said, her voice sharp with irritation. "Some of us have to work in the morning!"
I ignored her and turned back to Elera's door. I raised my hand to knock again.
"No one lives there." the woman said.
I froze. My hand hung in the air, inches from the wood. I turned to look at her.
"What?"
"She moved out, some weeks ago." The woman crossed her arms and leaned against her doorframe.
"I don't know where she went. She didn't leave a forwarding address. Now please, stop making noise and let me sleep."
She didn't wait for me to respond. She stepped back into her apartment and shut the door with a bang that echoed through the hallway like a gunshot.
She moved out. Weeks ago.
She left.
The words didn't make sense. She loved this apartment.
She had painted the walls herself, chosen the curtains, arranged the furniture just so.
It had been her sanctuary, her safe place, the one thing that was entirely hers.
She had told me that once, in the quiet of the early morning, her head on my chest and her fingers tracing patterns on my skin.
And now she was gone.
I pulled out my phone with shaking hands and unblocked her number. The contact was still there, I had never deleted it, even after I blocked her.
The call didn't go through. It didn't ring, didn't connect, didn't even give me the courtesy of a busy signal. There was just a dead sound, flat and final, and an automated voice telling me that the number I had dialed was not in service.
She had blocked me.
I had blocked her first, and now she had done the same, and I stood there in the dim hallway of an apartment building she no longer lived in, listening to a recording tell me that I couldn't reach her anymore.
So this was how she had felt.
This hollow ache. This helplessness. This desperate, clawing need to hear someone's voice and know that they were okay, that they hadn't disappeared, that they still existed somewhere in the world even if they didn't want you anymore.
This was what I had done to her.
I pressed my forehead against her door, the cold wood, the locked door, the door she would never open for me again, and I closed my eyes.
She was gone. I had let her slip away, and now she was gone.
But I wasn't going to give up. Not yet. Not ever.
I would find her. I would make her listen. And I would spend the rest of my life making it up to her if she let me.
I pushed off from the door and walked back down the stairs, my phone still in my hand, her number still on the screen. The night was still dark, and the city was still asleep, but I wasn't.
I had work to do.