Splintered Line (The Titans of Briarcliff #3)

Chapter 1

Zoe

The business building smells like burnt coffee and ambition—both stale, both overpriced.

My notebook is warm under my arm, the pages a brick of margins I’ll pretend are strategy later.

Around me, chairs scrape back, conversations bloom, and the room exhales like it’s glad to be done thinking for the day.

Someone behind the professor asks if the exam review is posted yet. Laptops snap shut in a staccato rhythm that always means one thing: late afternoon, and the campus about to tilt toward whatever comes next.

That smell clings. It always does. Like expectations that don’t know when to leave.

Halfway down the aisle, the air shifts.

Pressure registers at my back—pace matching mine, distance closing with intent. A presence you clock before you acknowledge it. Before you decide if you’re annoyed or already behind.

I don’t turn. I don’t have to.

Gio Rossi slips into my wake like the decision was made before I ever felt him there.

Instinct lengthens my stride, muscles recalibrating to the body crowding my peripheral vision.

He matches it without effort—measured, controlled—built for rooms that open ahead of him, for momentum that expects cooperation.

I register him before I look: a drop in temperature, the subtle bend of focus in his direction, the kind of gravity that follows men who assume space will be made.

Assuming compliance, always.

Something in my spine bristles. Sharp. Immediate.

The reaction hits before my brain can veto the input—a traitorous stutter that reads as provocation more than attraction, a flare that insults my intelligence.

Pulse racing anyway, adrenaline snapping to attention at a man who is ninety percent problem and ten percent charm.

Worse, he clocks the shift before I decide how to classify it.

Damn it, anyway.

A sideways glance is enough. The impact lands, cold and irritating.

His hair is still damp from the rink, dark strands curling at the ends like they refused instruction.

His face holds that familiar precision—clean lines, jaw set, a mouth that looks like it knows exactly when to smile and why.

Brown eyes catch mine and hold, steady, tracking me with a focus that drives irritation straight up my spine.

Recognition sits there. Awareness. Like he’s already catalogued the tension tightening my chest and decided to let it burn. Like he’s stepping back to calculate the cost of my composure.

That edge hits fast. The fact that he’s here—now, right after class, timed down to the minute—sharpens it.

“Zoe.”

His voice cuts through the noise, deliberate and weighted. It presses close, testing the boundary without permission.

Skin tightens. Reflexive, instant.

I keep moving, forcing my tone flat. “If this is about group participation, I carried you.”

“Strategic silence,” he replies, words rolling off his tongue with casual arrogance.

The hallway doors swing open, spilling us into the chaos of the main corridor. Light floods in, noise rises, and focus locks on the narrow gap between us, the way he claims it as if ownership is assumed.

“You contributed exactly one sentence,” I retort, the air outside thinning around me.

“An excellent sentence,” he counters, unbothered. “I pointed out the flaw in the marketing strategy.”

“You said, ‘We’ll circle back.’”

“And we will,” he says, smooth. “Eventually.”

The corner of my mouth betrays me, lifting before I catch it. I weaponize it immediately, reshaping my expression into something sharper.

Annoyance flares. Timing—that’s his weapon. He waits for the guard slip and steps into the opening. That’s what makes him dangerous. Precision.

His gaze flickers to my mouth, then back to my eyes like he’s inventorying tells.

“Game tonight?”

Movement halts. I turn. My face settles into neutrality.

“Is the ice cold?”

His lips curve, restraint built into the smile. “So that’s a yes.”

“Why are you even asking?” I shoot back. “You already know I’ll be there.”

“Just checking,” he says. “I play better with your heckling as background noise.”

A scoff escapes. “You play better because you’re arrogant.”

“Confidence,” he corrects.

“Delusion.”

He laughs, low and easy, and people instinctively make room for him while I keep fighting for inches. Two students veer around us without hesitation, orbiting him like gravity is law.

The imbalance burns hot.

We hit the stairwell—wide concrete, a landing that funnels traffic into a bottleneck. The crowd thickens, bodies weaving in chaotic clusters.

A guy cuts too close, shoulder angling for mine like I’m open space.

Gio moves.

A subtle shift of his frame—hard, immovable—redirects the collision before it lands. No touch. He claims the line, forcing the guy to stumble around him with a muttered curse. Then he steps back into my rhythm like nothing happened, a silent territorial blockade in the middle of the stampede.

The air shifts again.

His gaze settles heavy against my profile. He’s staking ground without asking, posture solid in the chaos. He holds space the way other people hold weapons.

I hate that he decides I require clearance, stepping in like my line won’t hold. It reads as conquest, not assistance.

“Still carrying your whole life in that bag?” he asks, nodding to the tote.

“Portfolio,” I correct, tightening my grip. “Try to keep up.”

“Milan’s coming up.”

My feet lock.

The stop is instinctive—full-body, abrupt—forcing traffic to bunch behind me. Someone swears as they sidestep. I shift one step aside, clearing the path without retreating. Noise churns around us while the pause hums with tension.

“And?” I answer, casual enough to lie.

His gaze drops to my bag, clocking the fabric peeking out, the way my fingers bleach white around the strap. Stress gets logged. Filed.

Damn it, still.

“You’ve been tight all week,” he says. “That explains it.”

The words strike clean and exact.

Breathing recalibrates. Shoulders square. His accuracy needles. Saying it out loud—in public—scrapes raw.

“And you’re always where you don’t belong,” I snap. “Did you wander off course, or is surveillance part of the training now?”

“No,” he says, unbothered. “You’re focused. That’s different.”

Heat coils low in my stomach. Sharp. Unwanted.

Control clamps down. It’s a practiced choice. I make it again.

“You don’t know anything about it.”

“I know you outwork half the people who’ll get picked,” he fires back. “If they pass you over, it’s institutional blindness, not lack of talent.”

A look honed to cut. “Careful.”

The warning carries weight.

He meets it straight on. “I am.”

His focus narrows—fully engaged.

“I’m here on purpose.”

The front doors come into view, sunlight spilling across polished floors. A digital screen cycles through events, then flashes the hockey promo for tonight like a personal jab.

Below it, the campus feed flips—DESIGN DEPARTMENT INFO SESSION: INTERNATIONAL PLACEMENT / SPONSORED BY THE ALDRIDGE FOUNDATION—before rotating away, the damage already done.

Glass catches my reflection—hair pulled back, jaw locked, shoulders squared like a decision already loaded. The tote hikes higher as posture aligns automatically.

Armor. Automatic response.

His gaze tracks the movement, heavy against my back, mapping weak points.

“You hate that I clock you,” he says.

A scoff. “You don’t know me.”

“I know enough,” he replies, stepping closer. The distance tightens until one pause would turn us into a headline by dinner.

Laughter breaks behind us—two girls passing, one glancing between us with sharp curiosity. Familiarity draws interest here. Proximity gets valued.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Rossi,” I say, stepping past him. “Some of us are working.”

His voice follows, unhurried. “You always are.”

Three steps carry me forward, expecting the pull of his presence to reattach.

It doesn’t this time.

His phone vibrates—short, sharp. One glance. Expression locks down. Eyes lift to me like the moment gets shelved.

“Barnes.”

It lands as a claim.

He peels off toward the stairwell rail, cutting through traffic like instinct parts it for him. No glance back.

I keep walking. Stay forward. Confirmation isn’t required to know he’s still in the building, still oriented to my path even as he moves away.

Awareness presses along my spine, my body already pricing his focus as future fallout.

And the part that alters the equation—the part I resent—is that he didn’t fall into step to flirt. He did it to make sure I registered the message.

Which means whatever Milan is about to demand from me, Gio Rossi is already standing in the doorway like it’s his threshold.

Someone brushes past, shoulder grazing my sleeve. A scrap of conversation follows—“…Aldridge got the placement last year, obviously… my mom said it was locked…”

The words slide under my ribs, clean and efficient.

Milan lingers long after the hallway swallows him. Weight. Judgment, combined. The sum of three years of sleepless nights, caffeine tremors, fingers split raw over silk chiffon and wool blends priced higher than my rent.

Swatches come back—the bruised purple twilight palette pinned to my ceiling last semester. The oxblood shade mixed for hours until it looked freshly torn. Those pages took blood. Mine.

Now they sit in my tote, dense and unforgiving, waiting on the Polimodi email. One click decides if I go to Milan or stagnate here.

A buzz in my pocket.

Pulse snaps upward on instinct before I check.

Campus group chat—someone clipped the hockey promo, tagged with a laughing emoji and

See you degenerates tonight.

I lock the screen.

Legacy students sour my throat—the Julia Aldridges who treat design like a placeholder between galas. They don’t read construction. They read names. They walk through doors pre-opened.

Leather bites as my grip tightens.

Pain centers me. Proof of presence. Proof of fight.

I refuse to be the girl who advances on association. I intend to advance on merit. But the silence in my inbox roars. It insists that merit alone no longer tips the scale.

Waiting is the real torture. Suspended breath. The conditioned flinch every time my phone vibrates, bracing for loss that hasn’t landed yet.

Or maybe it already has, and the system just hasn’t bothered to confirm it.

That might be why Gio asked—not for the answer, but because he read the strain. Because he recognizes load the way some people recognize dialect. Because men like him collect data before they move.

The building releases me into afternoon air, sunlight slamming hard. Campus crackles. Somewhere across the quad, someone shouts, laughter splintering the cold.

The tote digs into my shoulder, firm and unforgiving.

Phone comes out, thumb hovering over the mail icon, then swiping it away.

Work waits. Drawing waits. Something that answers only to my hands.