I left the ballroom like someone waking from a nightmare too thick to shake off.

No tears. No words. Just the soft echo of my heels crossing polished marble as the door swung open and swallowed me into the night.

The car Daniel had sent waited at the curb, a sleek black ghost under the streetlamp. The driver leaned casually against the hood, scrolling through his phone, oblivious to the wreckage a few feet away.

I didn’t slow down.

The heels Daniel picked for me bit into the backs of my ankles by the second block. Each step a small, deliberate wound. Each scrape of leather and skin a reminder that pain was at least mine. Honest.

The city blurred around me, neon streaks and distant sirens, too bright and too loud. Somewhere in the buzz, a cab pulled over, the brakes squealing like a warning.

The driver didn’t bother with a smile. Just jerked a thumb toward the backseat and said, “Where to?”

I sank into the cracked leather seat, the door clunking shut behind me like a coffin lid.

“Anywhere but here,” I said.

He grunted and pulled into traffic without another word.

I didn’t know where I was going. I only knew I couldn’t go home. Couldn’t stand under those walls, surrounded by memories of a marriage that had rotted from the inside out while I smiled politely and pretended not to smell the decay.

My hands twisted the strap of my purse until the cheap leather squealed.

The cab finally stopped in front of a bar I’d never seen before. Tucked between two polished office towers, its entrance was a simple black door under a flickering sign.

The kind of place where women disappeared for a while and nobody asked why.

Perfect.

I paid the driver with shaking hands and stepped out into the humid night. The bar swallowed me whole — low-lit, smoky, quiet. A single row of dark booths lined one wall, heavy wood tables glowing faintly under brass sconces.

No televisions blaring sports.

No bachelorette parties shrieking in glittering tiaras.

Just the low murmur of conversations that stayed private.

I liked it immediately.

I made my way to the far end of the bar and slid onto a stool, the leather cracked and sticky against the backs of my knees.

The bartender didn’t ask questions. He barely looked at me.

“Something dark,” I said, voice rasping at the edges. “Something strong.”

He nodded, poured a glass without comment, and slid it across the bar.

I wrapped both hands around it and lifted it to my lips. The first sip was a punch. Rough. Bitter. Exactly what I wanted.

I barely felt the tap at my senses — the presence settling at the stool one over.

But the voice?

It cut through the numbness clean.

“Rough night?”

I looked up, ready to dismiss whoever thought I was another pity project, and stopped breathing.

The man beside me didn’t belong here.

Not because he looked lost. Because he looked… inevitable.

Tall. Broad shoulders under a charcoal suit tailored with ruthless precision. Shirt open at the collar, a slash of tan skin at his throat. Hair slightly disheveled, like he hated looking too perfect but couldn’t help it.

And his eyes — God, his eyes.

They pinned me in place. Steel gray, sharp, dangerous, but not cruel.

I gripped my glass tighter, half a heartbeat from snapping something defensive.

Instead, my mouth moved on its own.

“Was it the eyeliner,” I said dryly, “or the thousand-yard stare that gave it away?”

He smiled like someone who’d already decided I was a pet interesting enough to keep.

“Neither,” he said. “It was the way you’re holding your drink. Like you want to throw it at someone but you’re too polite.”

I huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh.

It felt foreign in my chest.

“You usually this observant?” I asked, arching a brow even as I turned slightly toward him, like a plant leaning toward the first warm thing it had felt all year.

He shrugged one shoulder. “Only when it matters.”

He signaled the bartender with two fingers, ordered something dark and neat, his voice quiet but unquestionable. The bartender nodded like he knew him.

That should have made me wary.

It didn’t.

It made my pulse tick faster.

“I’m Nicholas Wolfe,” he said, turning back to me. “And before you say you’re not interested or give me a fake name, you should know, I’m only here for a conversation.”

I hesitated. Beautiful men didn’t talk to women like me without a reason.

“Is that your usual line?” I asked, skeptical but strangely willing to hear the answer.

He grinned, the kind of grin that felt like it could undo knots if you let it.

“Only for women who look like they need an escape from the world.”

I looked down at my glass.

“You don’t know me,” I said, trying to sound braver than I felt.

He leaned in, just a little closer, enough that I caught the faint scent of something warm and clean — cedar, maybe, or rain on pavement.

“True,” he murmured. “But I can tell you haven’t been touched by choice in a long time.”

The words struck a nerve so deep I almost flinched.

I should have stood up. Should have thrown a drink in his too-perfect face.

Instead, my heart stuttered.

“You’re good at this,” I said, voice unsteady. “The charming-stranger act.”

“I’m better at being real,” he said. “But if you want me to tone it down—”

He let the offer dangle between us.

I lifted my eyes to meet his…those sharp, knowing eyes that saw too much and didn’t look away.

“No,” I whispered. “Don’t.”

He smiled, slow and sure, like he’d been waiting for that answer.

“So,” he said lightly, almost teasing, “Elena, right?”

My pulse jumped.

I blinked. “How—?”

“You said it under your breath when you ordered,” he said. “I remember things that matter.”

I didn’t know what scared me more, how easily he noticed, or how badly I wanted to believe him.

The conversation slid into something warmer after that, something dangerous and a little electric.

I laughed once , an unguarded, bright thing I didn’t recognize.

He watched me like it was a miracle.

“You should do that more often,” he said softly.

“What?”

“Be selfish. Let people see you.”

And maybe it was the drink. Maybe it was the way the world outside this bar had already ended. Or maybe it was the way Nicholas Wolfe didn’t look at me like I was broken.

When he said, “Do you want to get out of here and do something wildly irresponsible?” I didn’t ask what that meant.

I just whispered, “Yes.”