Chapter Forty
Leona
Daan doesn’t speak right away.
He stands in the doorway like he belongs there, one hand still resting against the frame, his body loose in a way that doesn’t read as relaxed so much as entertained.
His gaze drifts across the room without hurry, taking in Willem, the screens, the strain still hanging in the air from everything Marius just said, and then, predictably, settling on me.
He smiles.
Not enough for anyone else to call it a smile if they wanted to lie to themselves about it. Just enough to show he’s pleased.
Something in my stomach goes cold.
The room changes the instant his eyes land on me. I feel it before I think it. The whole space seems to tighten around the fact that he is here, inside this room, looking at me like he arrived at exactly the right moment and knows it.
“What did I miss?” he asks.
His tone is almost light, almost conversational, like the room isn’t still vibrating with what Marius just admitted, like I’m not standing here with tears still drying on my face, like Willem hasn’t just called me leverage and liability in the same breath, like everything hasn’t already changed.
“Nothing that concerns you,” Marius says.
His voice has gone flat again. Controlled. Too controlled. The kind that means the edge is back in place but only because he forced it there.
Daan doesn’t react to the dismissal. If anything, something about him sharpens with it. He takes one step into the room without being asked, letting the door fall shut behind him with a click that sounds far louder than it should.
I don’t move.
But my attention does.
It pulls toward him slowly, unwillingly, like touching a bruise with your eyes before your hand knows better than to follow. At first it’s just presence. Another body. Another man in the room. Then it catches on details before I can stop it.
His face.
The shape of it.
The stillness in it.
Then his chin.
The rough, uneven shadow of stubble there shouldn’t matter.
It shouldn’t mean anything. But the second I register it, something in me drops so hard it almost feels physical.
My breath catches. My chest tightens. Not a memory, not fully, but something close enough that my body reacts before my mind can reject it.
No.
The thought comes instantly.
No, that isn’t—
I didn’t see his face.
I didn’t see anything.
But the feeling doesn’t leave.
It stays under my skin, quiet and wrong, like a splinter working deeper every time I breathe.
Marius moves.
He doesn’t touch me, but he steps just far enough to break Daan’s line to me without making a show of it. He simply places himself there, solid and immediate, and I feel the shift in the room deepen.
Daan sees that too.
Of course he does.
His eyes slide to Marius, then back, and something in his expression changes. Not amusement anymore.
Recognition.
“Well,” he says softly, like he’s making a note of it. “That’s interesting.”
Willem still says nothing, but his posture changes too, only slightly. His focus comes fully off the screens now. He’s watching Daan in that still way of his that always feels worse than anger.
“Why are you here?” Marius asks.
No patience.
No politeness.
Daan tilts his head, looking almost thoughtful. It would read lazy on another man. On him it feels like a dare.
“I came to check in,” he says. “Seems like I picked a good time.”
“You didn’t.”
Daan ignores that. His gaze comes back to me, slower now, more deliberate, and I feel my whole body react to it. The urge to step back hits first. Then the certainty that stepping back would be noticed. Then the anger that he can still do this much without even touching me.
“You look better,” he says. “Less pale. Standing straighter too.”
I don’t answer.
I don’t trust my voice. Not because I’m afraid I’ll sound weak. Because I’m not sure it will sound like mine at all.
Marius shifts again, broader this time, blocking him more fully. Daan pulls his gaze from mine and regards Marius once again.
“That’s not what I’m hearing,” Daan says. Some of the false ease has drained from his voice now. “I’m hearing you’ve made this personal.”
Marius doesn’t look at him.
“That’s not your concern.”
“It becomes my concern if it affects the outcome.”
“It doesn’t.”
Daan lets out a low laugh under his breath, humorless and thin.
“You sure about that?”
The silence that follows lands heavy. Not empty. Not neutral.
Willem cuts into it before it can stretch farther.
“We’ve identified a pattern,” he says. “Three days of observation. Escalation last night.”
Daan doesn’t break eye contact with Marius.
“Then you know they’re not just watching.”
“We do.”
“And you’re still keeping her here.”
The way he says keeping makes something in me turn over.
Not because of the word itself.
Because of the satisfaction inside it.
My voice comes out before I can stop it.
“You say that like I have a choice.”
Daan looks at me fully then. Really looks. And something shifts in his face, subtle but there, some private satisfaction I don’t understand and hate anyway.
“You always have a choice,” he says.
The words should sound neutral.
They don’t.
Something under them is wrong. Too knowing. Too pleased with itself. My body reacts before my mind does, a hard tightening low in my ribs, a kind of instinctive recoil that never quite reaches my feet.
Marius answers immediately.
“Not anymore.”
Daan’s gaze snaps back to him.
“Then that’s your mistake.”
He takes one step forward.
Small.
Measured.
Toward me.
Marius moves at once, cutting him off again, and this time there is nothing subtle left in him at all.
“Stay where you are.”
Daan stops.
My pulse climbs. My breathing goes uneven again. I hate that I still can’t look away from him, hate even more that some part of me feels like looking away would be more dangerous than staring.
“What point are you trying to make?” I ask.
My voice is steadier than I feel.
Daan’s mouth shifts.
“That you’ve already become the center of something you don’t understand.”
My jaw tightens.
“Then explain it.”
He studies me for a second too long, and I understand with sudden clarity that he likes being asked. Likes withholding. Likes knowing he can stand there holding a room by the throat with almost nothing at all.
Then he says,
“No.”
“Why not.”
That half-amused look returns, thinner now, stranger.
“Because you’re not the one I’d be explaining it to.”
Marius steps forward again. Whatever patience he had is gone.
“Then you’re done here.”
Daan doesn’t argue.
Doesn’t resist.
But he doesn’t hurry either. He lets his gaze move between us one last time, slow and deliberate, like he’s confirming something only he understands. It lands on me again, and this time it feels almost proprietary.
“Be careful,” he says.
The words are for Marius.
But he’s still looking at me when he says them.
Then he turns and walks out.
The door closes behind him with a soft click.
The room doesn’t settle.
It holds.
Everything in me is still fixed on the door after he’s gone, like if I look away too quickly something worse will happen.
My thoughts keep circling back to the same wrong details.
The stubble. The tone of his voice. The way something inside me reacted to him before I could explain it.
It doesn’t make sense. It can’t. But it won’t let go.
My hand lifts without permission and presses against my sternum, like I can physically steady whatever just shifted loose inside me.
“Leona,” Marius says quietly.
I don’t look at him.
Not yet.
Because if I do, I don’t know what I’ll see there. Anger. Calculation. Something darker.
Or worse, recognition.
Then my phone vibrates in my pocket.
The sound cracks through the room so sharply I flinch. It takes me half a second to place it. My hand moves immediately, dragging it free, my eyes dropping to the screen—
And freezing.
Nora.
Calling.
The name glows too brightly against everything else in the room. Too normal. Too familiar. Too clean against the wrongness Daan left behind him.
The phone buzzes again.
Behind me, Marius has gone completely still. I can feel it without looking. Willem too. The whole room seems to sharpen around that tiny sound like it has become another threat they have to account for.
I stare at the screen one second longer, my thumb hovering above it.
Not because I’m afraid of what Nora might say.
Because I’m suddenly no longer sure who, exactly, is still safe.
Then I answer.