Except in that moment, he looked more tired than dangerous.
He didn’t step inside right away. His gaze moved once—past me, into the apartment, taking in the room in a quick, silent sweep. Couch. Kitchen. Window. Hallway that wasn’t really a hallway. Small space. No exits except the one he was filling.
On my screen, Micah went quiet for half a beat too long. Then, softly, “Oh. That’s… not what I expected.”
Heat climbed straight up my neck. I realized with a jolt that I was still holding my phone, standing in the doorway like my brain had detached from my body.
“Hi,” I stammered too quickly. “Sorry. Yes. Come in.”
Smooth, Beatriz.
His eyes shifted back to mine. For one second, I got the unsettling impression that he’d clocked everything—my tone, my nerves, the phone in my hand, the fact that I looked about twelve seconds from a stress-induced blackout.
He gave one short nod and stepped inside only after I moved out of the way.
The apartment changed the second he crossed the threshold.
It was ridiculous, really. Same furniture. Same lamplight. Same cramped little living room I had spent months making feel like mine. But now he was here, and the air felt different. Smaller. Thicker. My apartment usually smelled faintly like laundry detergent, paperbacks, and whatever tea I’d forgotten to finish. Now there was cold night air in it. Wool. Cedar. Something sharper and male that didn’t belong to me.
He set the duffle bag down beside the wall with a quiet thud and adjusted the books in his grip.
Micah cleared her throat through my phone speaker.
I closed my eyes for one mortifying second. Right. Still on FaceTime.
“This is Micah,” I said, turning the screen toward him before I could overthink how strange that was. “My best friend.”
Micah lifted her hand in a small, cautious wave. “Hi.”
Alois looked at the screen, then at her, expression unreadable. “Hello.”
His voice was lower in person than it had sounded in interviews. Rougher, too. Less polished. It landed in the room and stayed there.
Micah’s brows rose just slightly. “I’m going to let you go,” she said, but her tone said very clearly that she would have preferred to do the opposite. Her eyes locked on mine through the screen. “Call me later.”
“I will.”
The screen went dark. The silence that dropped into its place felt immediate and total. No buffer. No witness. No one to absorb the awkwardness except the two of us standing several feet apart in my very small apartment, pretending this was in any way normal.
Bento chose that moment to reappear, only his front half visible, his golden eyes fixed on Alois with flat, suspicious intensity.
Alois noticed him. Of course he noticed him. His gaze dipped once, briefly, then lifted again.
“He doesn’t like me,” he observed.
The fact that those were the first words spoken after Micah hung up threw me badly enough that I answered before thinking.
“He doesn’t like anyone who disrupts his routine.”
One corner of his mouth moved. Not a smile. More like he acknowledged the hit. “Reasonable.”
I should have said something smooth after that. Something competent. Something that sounded like a woman in control of the very complicated professional arrangement she had been handed only hours ago.
Instead, I started talking too fast. “I know tonight is not ideal. Or normal. Obviously. And I know you were already briefed, but I thought it might make sense if we went over some of the logistics now, since tomorrow is going to be?—”
“I was in the room too,” he cut in. His expression didn’t change, but something about his posture did. Stillness, maybe. The kind that looked relaxed until you realized it was actually control. One hand rested loosely against the books he still hadn’t put down. The other hung at his side, knuckles broad and scarred and scraped in ways that made it hard not to think of the footage Micah had mentioned.
Heat flared again under my skin. “Right. Yes. I know that.”