Page 74 of Dark Billionaire Predator

I don't go. Not yet.

Seven fifteen. Her alarm. A soft chime—not the aggressive buzz I'd expected but something melodic, almost apologetic, the kind of alarm chosen by someone who wants to wake gently because the world will be harsh enough once she's upright.

She reaches for her phone. Silences it. Lies still for a moment, and I can feel the exact instant she remembers I'm here—the slight tension in her shoulders, the catch in her breathing, the microsecond of recalibration as her body processes the presence of another person in a bed that has been hers alone.

She rolls over. Faces me. Her eyes are soft with sleep, her hair creased from the pillow, her face unguarded in a way I've never seen it—no composure, no professional distance, no mask. Just Lucy, half-awake, looking at me from six inches away.

"You stayed," she says.

"I stayed."

"You slept."

"I slept."

She studies my face. The therapist's assessment—I can see it activate, the slight narrowing of her eyes, the analytical engine starting up behind the sleepiness. She's reading me. Cataloging whatever my face looks like at seven fifteen on a Monday morning in her bed, data she's never had access to, a version of me she's never seen.

"You look different when you sleep," she says.

"Different how?"

"Younger. Quieter. Like someone turned the volume down."

The observation lands somewhere I wasn't expecting. Younger. Quieter. The boy behind the couch, maybe. The version of me that existed before the volume got turned up—before the Brotherhood, the blades, the wall, the twelve years of carrying a dead man's questions alone in the dark.

She gets up. I watch her move through the apartment—the bathroom, the closet, the efficient choreography of a woman getting ready for work. She doesn't perform for me. Doesn't choose her clothes with any more care than she would alone, doesn't adjust her routine to accommodate my presence. She brushes her teeth. Pulls her hair back. Dresses in the professional armor I've seen her wear—blouse, trousers, the scarf around her throat that is a habit now, even though the bruise has nearly faded.

I get up. Pull on my clothes from last night. Follow her to the kitchen.

She's making coffee. Two cups—one already poured, the other in progress. She set out two cups. Before the alarm, before she was fully awake, she took out two cups. The detail catches in my chest like a fishhook.

"When did you start doing that?" I ask.

She looks at the cups. Back at me. A slight flush rises in her cheeks—the first crack in the morning composure, a moment of self-consciousness that makes her look startlingly young.

"Just now," she says. "Don't read into it."

"I read into everything."

"I know. That's exhausting."

"Is that your clinical opinion?"

"That's my Monday morning opinion. Drink your coffee."

I drink the coffee. It's good—better than the instant I keep in the church, better than anything I make for myself, the particular quality of a cup prepared by someone who takes the ritual seriously. She stands across the counter from me and drinks hers and the kitchen is small enough that we're only three feet apart and the morning light through the window catches her face and I think:this is what people have. This ordinary thing. Coffee and countertops and morning light and another person's face across a small kitchen on a Monday.

I've never had this. I've had women in my bed—briefly, transactionally, gone by morning. I've had the church and the wall and the blades and the cold efficiency of a life designed around purpose rather than comfort. I've never stood in a kitchen and drunk coffee that someone made for me and felt the terrifying, vertiginous pull of something as simple as a second cup.

"I have to go," she says. "Clients at nine."

"I have somewhere to be, too."

She looks at me. The assessment again—reading me, always reading me. She doesn't ask where. Doesn't push. I'venoticed that about her—the discipline of not pushing, the therapeutic skill repurposed for personal use. She creates space and waits to see if I fill it.

I don't fill it. Not today.

She picks up her bag. Puts on her coat. Pauses at the door and looks back at me—standing in her kitchen, holding her coffee cup, wearing last night's clothes in her Monday morning light.