Chapter 26 Adela
Theo picks up The Prince , flipping through the pages. He lands on the only page I have bookmarked with a sticky note. His finger traces one of my underlined passages.
"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."
"Classic choice," he says. "Do you agree with it?"
"I think fear and loyalty are different things," I say. "Fear makes people obey. Loyalty makes them choose you."
His eyes lift to mine. Something in them sharpens. "And which one do you think sustains power longer?"
"That’s easy. Loyalty. Fear creates resentment. Eventually, people find a way to escape what they're afraid of."
"Unless they can't escape." He leans forward slightly. "What if the person holding power controls every exit?"
"Then they're not sustaining power through fear. They're sustaining it through imprisonment."
A slow smile spreads across his face. "Good distinction."
We fall into a rhythm, debating whether corruption starts at the top or the bottom of institutional hierarchies, whether Machiavelli was describing reality or prescribing behavior, whether modern politics has evolved beyond Renaissance power plays or just gotten better at hiding them.
I challenge him on several points. He doesn't get defensive or talk over me. He listens, his full attention focused on me in a way that makes my skin feel warm.
When I make a particularly sharp argument about judicial corruption masquerading as discretion, he leans back and studies me.
"You don't argue like someone who's been protected," he says.
The observation catches me off guard. "What does that mean?"
"Most people who grow up comfortable learn to avoid conflict. You lean into it."
I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult, but something about the way he says it makes it feel like the former.
"Maybe I'm just tired of avoiding things," I say quietly.
"Good." His eyes don't leave mine. "Avoidance is how they win."
I shift in my seat, suddenly aware that we've been talking nonstop for some time and I still know almost nothing about him.
"Are you a poli-sci major?" I ask.
He smirks. "No. I just grew up around people who think they run things."
"Like who?"
"People who confuse position with power." He says it casually, but there's an edge underneath. "Anyone with a title and an ego."
I want to press further, but his phone buzzes on the table between us.
He glances at the screen, and I catch the name before he picks it up: Nessa.
He answers the call. "Yeah, I'll be there."
I pull my laptop toward me and pretend to read something. He ends the call and leans back in his chair. When he looks at the ceiling, I get the feeling he's deciding something — not about where he needs to be, but about whether to stay.
He stays.
"Your turn," he says, like the call never happened.
I look up. "For what?"
"You've been asking me questions for almost an hour." He tilts his head slightly, intrigued. "I haven't asked you anything."
He has, but I blush anyway and say, "What do you want to ask me?"
He looks at me for a moment. "I haven’t seen you before.”
I nod. “That’s because I just transferred here.”
“You just transferred? Why?"
"I had a reason," I say.
"Past tense."
I don't answer that.
He doesn't push it, which is almost worse — because it means he heard the thing I didn't say and decided to leave it there. Most people would fill the silence. He lets it exist, watching me with those pale eyes that give nothing away and somehow take everything in.
"What does your father do?" I ask, redirecting.
"He practices law."
"What kind?"
"The kind where the outcome is decided before the trial starts." He says it without bitterness. Just fact. "He's good at it."
I turn that over. "And your mother?"
"She works with people who break." A pause. "Helps them figure out where the crack started."
I nearly smile. That’s a thoughtful way to put it. I look at him, full of questions. Instead, all that comes out is, "Like a therapist?"
"Forensic psychologist. She says most people in power are just afraid of what happens when they lose it."
He is insightful. I watch him for a moment and ask, "Is she right?"
"About most things." Something moves across his face that I can't read. "It's inconvenient."
I almost smile again. "Having a mother who understands people?"
"Having a mother who understands you."
The way he says it — quiet, unadorned, like it slipped out without permission — makes me go still. It's the first thing he's said that feels like it cost him something. He doesn't seem to notice, or pretends not to, taking a sip of his water and looking out the window at the gray afternoon.
I look at him in profile and think about what it would be like to grow up seen by your mother like that. Not managed or presented or positioned, the way I've been my entire life, the mayor's daughter, always one step removed from being a person and one step closer to being a symbol.
"What are you actually researching?" he asks, eyes still on the window.
"Institutional corruption. How power structures protect themselves."
He turns back to me. "Why?"
"Because someone I know got hurt," I say carefully. "And the people who should be asking questions aren't."
He holds my gaze. "So you are."
"Trying to."
His eyebrows flick up briefly. "And what have you found?"
"Surface-level things. Academic theory. Nothing that explains how it actually works in practice — how someone with enough power can make things disappear without leaving fingerprints."
He's quiet for a moment. His finger traces the edge of the table, back and forth, and I watch it without meaning to.
"Power doesn't leave fingerprints," he says finally, "because it doesn't do its own dirty work.
It creates systems. Obligations. Debts. And then it calls them in when it needs to.
" He pauses. "You're not going to find what you're looking for in academic theory because academia studies power from the outside.
You need to understand it from the inside. "
I stare at him.
He is so smart.
I bet he’s like his mother.
"How do you know so much about this?"
"I told you." His eyes meet mine. "I grew up around people who think they run things."
I smile. "Think?” I lean forward. “Do they or do they not?"
"Some of them." A thoughtful pause. "The ones who are actually dangerous don't look dangerous. They look reasonable. Measured. They sit on benches and sign documents and attend fundraisers, and everyone calls them honorable."
Something cold moves through me.
He's describing Judge Ravenshaw so precisely that for one suspended second, I wonder if he knows. If this is intentional. If he's telling me something without telling me something.
But his expression is neutral. Distant. Like he's describing a category of person, not a specific one.
I'm watching him trace the spine of the book when it hits me.
Not slowly. All at once, like something clicking into place that should have clicked when I first saw his face.
The hospital. The dark hoodie. The sling on his arm. His eyes. I go very still.
When I look at his arm, I say, "You were at the hospital."
He doesn't react. Doesn't look up from the book. "Was I."
Not a question. Not a confirmation. Just those two words sitting in the air between us like he's waiting to see what I'll do with them.
I lean forward slightly. "Is that why you’re wasting your time talking to me?”
His gaze flicks up, and I’m so heated that I don’t read his face at all. All I feel is fire. “So…tell me what you know about Cody."
His eyes give me absolutely nothing.
"Cody who?"
The silence that follows is very loud.
We stare at each other across the table, and neither of us moves, and the air between us has completely changed — charged with something that wasn't there a minute ago.
But I blink, wondering if I’ve completely misread this entire situation.
My phone buzzes on the table, breaking the spell.
His eyes drop to the screen for just a fraction of a second — long enough to see Beckett's name — and something shifts in his jaw. And then it’s gone.
He stands and picks up his jacket.
I stand too. "Wait — that's it?"
He doesn't look at me as he walks away.
"Until next time," he says.
And then he's gone.
I pick up my phone. Two texts from Beckett.
I set it back down and look at the empty chair across from me.
Then I open the book to the back.
The annotations are dense, cramped, written in a hand that presses hard into the page like whoever held the pen had something to prove. I read the first one, scrawled beside a passage about the nature of enemies.
The most dangerous ones are the ones who smile.
My pulse jumps.
I close the book.
I should go back to my dorm. Text Beckett back. Eat something. Be a normal person living a normal life.
Instead, I sit there in the emptying library for another ten minutes, thinking about pale blue eyes and a jaw like a crime and the specific way he said avoidance is how they win — like he knew exactly what I was avoiding and was daring me to stop.
This is a problem.
I know it's a problem.