BEATRICE'S POV
The next morning is supposed to be a normal Saturday. A lazy one. Sunlight and quiet and happiness found in the most mundane things — the kind of morning I used to take for granted before my life caught fire.
My wrist still aches from yesterday. Last night when the bell rang, I was half expecting Theodore. Instead it was Adrien — drenched, offering the most absurd excuses I've ever heard from a man worth billions.
It's becoming impossible to keep track. One night it's Theodore. The next it's both. The night after, it's Adrien alone. My sanity is being tag-teamed by two men who apparently have nothing better to do with their evenings.
The aroma of roasted coffee fills the café. Customers murmur their orders. Somewhere behind the counter, a machine hisses and steams. I'm in a white blouse, hair tied in a bun, long black skirt. Simple. Easy. My half-eaten butter croissant rests on the plate beside a cup of black coffee cooling slowly.
I flip through a random magazine, trying to ignore the fact that Lucian Rothenburg's words from earlier this week are still circling my thoughts like vultures.
A sigh leaves my body — deep enough to rattle the table.
Because how do I explain this to anyone? A week ago, I was an accountant. One fire changed everything.
"Too heavy a sigh for a Saturday morning."
A deep, familiar voice catches me completely off guard. My head snaps up.
Theodore Schweitzer is sitting across from me. Casually. As if the chair has been waiting for him specifically.
For a moment I wonder if I'm dreaming, because so far this man has only ever appeared after sunset — when darkness conceals everything. Honestly, a part of me assumed the worst about his timing. That the nighttime approaches were deliberate. Calculated.
But here he is. Nine in the morning. Sunlight on his face. A bouquet of yellow tulips in his hand that look like they were picked from a field twenty minutes ago.
"What are you doing here?" I whisper.
He looks into my eyes. Those violet irises I thought were dark and ominous are brighter in daylight — like two polished amethysts catching morning sun through the café window.
Theodore is dressed in a beige linen shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms, a classic Cartier on his wrist. Black tailored trousers. Loro Piana loafers. The same agarwood, leather, and cool musk lingers in the space between us.
This man looks like every book boyfriend I ever read about in my teenage years. Sitting across from me at 9 AM on a random Saturday with flowers.
"Thought I'd take you on a date." He says it the way someone might suggest getting coffee — like it's the most natural thing in the world.
I blink. Compose myself. "I'm busy."
"Reading a magazine?" He tilts his head to glance at my open page.
"Yes."
The corner of his mouth tugs. He nods, then extends the bouquet toward me. "Saw these on the way. Thought of you."
Something flutters low in my stomach. I look at the tulips. They're impossibly bright against the dark wood of the table — the kind of yellow that makes you want to touch it just to confirm it's real.
"I don't like tulips." The lie comes out smooth.
He blinks. Pulls the bouquet back gently. "Then what do you like, other than white roses and pink peonies?"
I stare at him.
What am I supposed to do with this man? Imagine: a Saturday morning, a café, a handsome stranger sitting across from you with flowers. You reject him. And instead of leaving, he simply asks what flowers you actually like.
I rub my knuckle across my eyebrow. Torn between reaching for the tulips and shoving him out the door to protect what's left of my sanity.
Theodore places the flowers to the side of the table and orders himself a hot chocolate with whipped cream.
I look at him. "You like sweet things?"
Genuine shock must be written across my face because his expression doesn't change — no embarrassment, no deflection. He just looks at me.
"Hot chocolate specifically. My mother used to make it every winter morning when I was a kid."
His mother.
Something shifts around him when he says that word. His voice softens at the edges — the way a voice only softens around memories that still feel warm despite everything that came after. A familiar comfort he doesn't share easily.
New York is bright today. Morning sunlight filters through the glass beside our table, lighting up the wooden floors and walls of the café. The coffee machine hums behind us.
And for the first time, I look at him carefully. Not cautiously. Not defensively. Carefully — the way you look at something you're trying to understand.
The way his dark blonde hair falls gently over his brow. The thick black lashes framing those unsettling eyes. A small mole just beneath his bottom lip.
He's beautiful. Not handsome. Beautiful — in a way that has nothing to do with symmetry and everything to do with the quiet, unguarded thing happening behind his expression right now.
His gaze locks on mine. "Seems like you've taken a liking to my face."
"Yeah."
His eyes widen. I freeze.
The word left my mouth before my brain could intercept it. Theodore's breath catches — visibly, unmistakably — and something sparks behind those violet eyes that I am not ready to name. His lips part slightly.
Heat creeps up my neck. I sit up straight, masking whatever is happening to my bloodstream.
"Well. You are beautiful. Not exactly a revelation."
His hot chocolate arrives, breaking the air between us. I nearly sigh with relief, thinking he'll let it go.
"Nobody has ever called me beautiful."
My fingers tighten around my coffee mug.
His cheeks flush. Slowly, unevenly — the way a blush looks on someone who hasn't worn one in years. It makes him look younger. Softer. Like someone who existed before the patriarch, before the rumors, before the blood.
My heart thuds behind my ear. I don't know how to slow it down.
This man is dangerous. He is called the most notorious banker in the West. A man who allegedly killed his father and half-brothers for power. He's here to use me for access into Laurent's systems.
But he's looking away. Almost shyly. An expression that doesn't fit a single version of him the world has ever known.
My grip on the mug tightens. My posture stiffens. I force my gaze to the window, to the street, to anything that isn't the flush on his cheeks.
Don't trust this. Don't trust this. Don't trust this.
I repeat it until the words lose meaning — because I don't know how to tell the difference between logic and illusion when he's sitting across from me looking like a raw, misunderstood man the world never bothered to see gently.
I finish my coffee and croissant faster than dignity allows. When I reach for my bag, he speaks.
"You're leaving?"
He blinks up at me. Something in his expression goes soft and open in a way that makes my chest tighten against my will.
"Yeah. I have plans."
"Can I drop you off?"
I shake my head. He tilts his.
My fist clenches under the table. "You haven't finished your hot chocolate."
"I can always have some later."
Theodore stands. Fixes his shirt. Pays for both his hot chocolate and my coffee and croissant before I can open my mouth to protest. Then he picks up the tulips and waits — not impatiently, not presumptuously. Just waits. Like a man who has decided that standing beside her is the only place worth being.
I exhale. Throw my bag over my shoulder. Walk out ahead of him with deliberately terrible posture.
See, Theodore Schweitzer? I'm a careless, classless cavewoman. Adjust your expectations accordingly.
***
A Pagani Zonda C12 S sits at the curb like something that doesn't belong to the same century as the café beside it — low-slung, silver-bodied, carbon fiber curves catching the morning light the way a blade catches flame. The quad exhaust pipes at the rear are absurdly wide, almost obscene in their ambition.
He opens the passenger door for me. I look at the car the way someone looks at a personal insult delivered in Italian.
"You have quite the car collection." I glance at him.
He gives me the most genuinely oblivious expression I have ever seen on a man worth billions. "It's not much. Five here and seventy back in Zurich."
I get in the car before my eyeballs physically leave my skull.
He places the flowers in the back seat. Settles into the driver's seat. "Where do you want me to drop you?"
"Fifth Avenue."
He nods. No follow-up questions. Just a glance to make sure I've put on my seatbelt, and then he drives.
It's strange — how calm things are around him. I've known this man for barely three days. I try not to look at how his gaze stays steady on the road. How his hands rest on the wheel with the particular ease of someone who's been in control of dangerous things his entire life.
Something stirs in my stomach. I don't name it. Logic won't let me.
He is Theodore Schweitzer. A man who was never supposed to notice someone like me. And yet this is the third time he's appeared in my orbit, even though I've given him nothing but resistance.
"Do you know anyone from the Russian Bratva?"
The question comes out of nowhere. My frown is immediate. "How would I know anyone from the Russian Bratva?"
His jaw tightens. He slows the car slightly, glancing at me with an expression that's trying to find words that won't terrify me.
"The arson at the gala. It was planned by Russia's most powerful criminal organization." A pause. "The Pakhan of that Bratva has a personal history with Chairman Dominik. Adrien's father."
My hand stills on my bag strap. The warmth of the morning drains out of the car.
He looks back at the road. When he speaks again, his voice carries the specific calm of a warning aimed at a future I've thrown myself into without understanding.
"What's the name?" I ask. My voice is steady. My hands are not.
"Nochnye Kogti. Six hundred and sixty-six members spread across continents. A thirty-two-billion-dollar empire — oligarchs, cartels, drug networks, military figures. They control the majority of organized crime in Eastern Europe."
My throat dries. Goosebumps spread across my arms despite the warm leather seat beneath me. My grip on the bag strap turns white-knuckled.
"Are you saying I've caught their attention?" My voice comes out small. Smaller than I'd ever allow anyone else to hear.
Theodore's hand moves from the wheel and covers mine.
Not grabbing. Not pulling. Just covering. Warm. Steady. Large enough to make my hand disappear beneath his.
My heart skips. I look at him.
"No. They won't harm you."
I blink. My lips tremble despite everything I'm doing to hold them still. "Why not? I ruined their plan."
Something in those bright violet eyes darkens — not with anger, but with a certainty so absolute it rearranges the air between us.
"Because you have me." He says it without blinking. Without performing it. Like stating a physical law. "I'm telling you this because I don't think Adrien will. He probably doesn't even know yet."
He pauses. Squeezes my hand once. Firm. Deliberate.
"You're safe as long as I'm here. Don't be scared."
I look at his hand over mine. At the road ahead. At the skyline catching morning light through the windshield.
This man is doing something to me that I don't have a name for yet.
And I'm running out of reasons to stop him.