Chapter 7
2202words
Lucian Sinclair’s Estate
The morning air clung to a restless hush, as though the estate had absorbed the weight of yesterday’s storm and held its breath. Pale light brushed the archways, catching on the polished frame of the black town car idling in the circular drive.
Raven—still Raven, though the name fit her like a blade turned sideways in her chest this morning—stood by the rear door, back straight, hands behind her, face unreadable beneath the sharp line of her tied-back hair. But beneath that stillness was something heavier than habit: the echo of the North Courtyard. Of sharp words that had torn through composure like splinters ripping through silk. Of the moment Lucian Sinclair looked at her not as an agent, not as a stranger hired to guard him, but as something he couldn’t quite categorize—and didn’t seem to want to.
She had barely spoken since.
Lucian emerged from the South Wing entrance, his coat already half-buttoned, his eyes flicking toward her with the same unreadable precision he reserved for boardrooms and battlefields. His walk was smooth but his jaw was tight, and when he nodded once in acknowledgment, it was the kind of gesture that held too much in too little movement.
She opened the door without a word. He slid inside.
The car pulled away from the estate with practiced ease, gravel crunching beneath the tires like a hush drawn over unspoken things. Ash drove in silence, Vex beside him with one arm slung casually over the console, both attuned in their own ways to the tension behind them. In the back seat, Lucian and Raven sat side by side yet miles apart, the space between them stretched taut by everything unsaid. Four people in the same car—two facing the road ahead, two facing what had been left behind—yet not a single one close enough to name what still hung in the air.
La Chaleur
La Chaleur was not marked by a sign, only the quiet swell of instrumental jazz from behind its lacquered black doors. Nestled within the top floor of a private building overlooking the city’s quieter southern skyline, it was a place reserved for the kind of patrons who didn’t need to ask for a table—they already had one.
The interior was soaked in soft amber light. The walls were paneled in brushed walnut, each curve of wood catching the low glow of antique sconces. No menus on the table. No music too loud. Only whispers, rare laughter, and the occasional clink of a glass placed with care. Every detail was designed to cradle power in discretion.
Raven followed Lucian in through the vestibule. Ash and Vex had taken positions outside by the vehicle, leaving her a silent shadow a step behind Lucian. She wore her tailored suit like it was part of her skin, movement smooth, face unreadable. But her eyes were in motion, noting exits, blind corners, waitstaff paths, other patrons.
Then something stopped her.
Near the bar, behind a velvet cord that separated the lounge from the main dining floor, stood an old clock tower mechanism—preserved under glass, gears stilled but untouched, caught mid-turn like time had paused centuries ago. It was mounted vertically, suspended by bronze framing. The hands were frozen at 4:37.
Raven’s gaze lingered. The cracked glass covering the face. The etched initials at the center, too worn to make out. The way the brass had dulled into a warm, coppered brown—softened by age but never broken.
Lucian had already taken two steps forward when he noticed she wasn’t beside him. He turned, eyes following hers, then lowered his voice.
“You like clocks?” he asked.
She answered without looking at him. “Just that one.”
Raven’s eyes narrowed, but not at him—at the frozen hands on the dial. “It’s old. Stuck. But someone still thought it was worth displaying.” She paused. “Even broken things get remembered.”
Lucian looked at her, quiet for a beat longer than necessary. Then he gestured for the maître d’ to show them to their table. He didn’t press the question.
Their table was toward the center of the room—private, but with full view of the space. Three seats. Lucian, Raven, and the man he was about to meet. Raven didn’t sit.
The man arrived five minutes late. Gregory Albrecht. Tan coat, cheap cologne, and a smile that tried too hard to be expensive. He greeted Lucian with a wide grin, half bowing, then let his gaze slide to Raven with an amused tilt of his head.
“I didn’t realize we had company.”
Lucian didn’t even blink. “She’s not company. She’s protection.”
Gregory’s eyes lingered too long. “Looks more like decoration.”
The words were expected, the tone tired. She felt them skim across her skin like a fingernail over glass. Useless. Dull. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t blink. Her breath stayed even. The insult was nothing. The man behind it, even less. She catalogued him in a heartbeat—lack of restraint, anxious fingers, projecting too much confidence too fast. Someone who underestimated threats if they wore heels and didn’t shout.
But then Lucian spoke.
“She’s the only thing between your mouth and a closed casket.”
Raven’s spine went rigid, not from alarm—but from something stranger. Warmer. Something she couldn’t name.
It was the pause before he said it. The precision of each word. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. His tone was all the warning anyone required.
Gregory stammered. “I didn’t mean—of course. Of course. Just a little surprised, is all. She doesn't exactly scream 'bodyguard.'”
Lucian turned his gaze toward him, slow and cold.
“She doesn’t need to scream. You’ll already be dead by the time you realize your mistake.”
Gregory froze, blinking.
Lucian leaned back, calm and poised, but the air around him had gone still. "Now talk, or leave. You're already wasting more oxygen than your deal is worth."
Gregory’s smile faltered entirely. He swallowed hard—and started talking.
The meal was quiet after that. Raven stood behind Lucian, watchful, gaze shifting between Gregory’s restless hands, the wine he barely sipped, the glances he kept sneaking at the other patrons. She’d filed him away already—small man in a big seat.
But once—just once—her eyes drifted back to the clock.
Time didn’t move. But something inside her did.
Lucian saw it. A reflection caught in the dark glass of the wine cabinet in front of them. Lucian’s eyes followed, not hers—but the angle revealed just enough. He saw what she looked at, and how she looked at it.
And in the space between courses and contracts, he said nothing. Just followed her gaze, then returned to his glass with a faint, unreadable smile.
En Route to Lucian Sinclair’s Estate
Late Afternoon
After a brief stop at the Dominion headquarters to finalize documents, they left the city in silence. The ride back was quiet, save for the occasional rustle of wind through the windows and the faint hum of tires against sun-warmed asphalt. Raven sat in the rear passenger seat of the sleek, dark vehicle, her gaze fixed outward as the trees blurred past.
She wasn’t thinking of the roads or the weather or even the still-fresh sting of being underestimated. She was thinking of the fractures—not the ones people saw, but the ones they didn’t. The kind that lived in glances that lingered too long, and silences that said more than shouted words ever could. She was thinking of Lucian—how his voice had softened when he defended her, how his anger yesterday had looked so much like something else.
Something closer to hurt.
She shifted slightly, folding her arms tighter. This wasn’t who she was meant to be—hovering in the shadows of boardrooms, interpreting the flickers of a man she had once watched from behind a garden hedge. She was trained to end threats, not manage them with social grace and silence. But Maxim had believed in this. In her.
“You’re more than what they see,” he once told her.
And so she remained.
Beside her, Lucian didn’t speak either. His posture was easy, composed, but his fingers drummed lightly on the leather between them—barely audible, but steady. Like a man keeping time with a rhythm only he could hear. He didn’t look at her, but his awareness of her presence was unmistakable. A flick of his eye to the window's reflection. The brief stillness when her shoulders shifted. A quiet tension lingered between them—not sharp, but stretched thin like thread on the edge of fraying.
He thought of her silence in the restaurant. Her gaze caught in the mechanism of a broken clock. The way she didn’t flinch when Albrecht insulted her, and the way she didn’t seem surprised when he’d answered for her.
Something was changing. In her. In him.
But neither of them said it.
Outside, the world kept moving, fast and blurred. Inside, everything felt suspended. Held.
Lucian glanced her way once—just once—long enough to catch the faint reflection of her in the window. And in that moment, she looked more real than anything outside.
And so he remained, too.
Lucian Sinclair’s Estate | The Master Suite
Early Evening
When they arrived, the silence followed them inside. Lucian paused at the last step of the staircase, removing his coat with a graceful, slightly weary motion. The kind of motion people only made when the weight they carried wasn’t just physical.
"I need to take a call in the study," he said, not looking at her, but his voice was less guarded now. Less clipped. “Take my things to my room?”
She nodded once. He handed her the folder and his coat without waiting for a reply and disappeared down the corridor toward the west wing.
Raven stepped inside Lucian’s room, letting the door drift shut behind her. The room was large, modern, and too pristine to feel lived-in. The furnishings were impeccable—walnut, steel, glass—but they felt curated, not chosen. Like everything in this house, it looked expensive. Cold. Safe. As if the walls themselves had been trained not to feel.
She moved quietly, placing his things on the polished oak bench at the foot of the bed. Then paused. The coat slid from her fingers more slowly than she intended, and she straightened it with deliberate care. As though something fragile had been stitched into the fabric.
Her eyes caught the soft light falling through the half-open curtains. It pulled her toward the window.
She didn’t know why she stayed there. Perhaps it was the quiet. Or perhaps it was the memory, unwelcome and persistent, of that morning in the courtyard—of the anger in his voice, and the way he’d looked at her like he wanted to understand and couldn’t. She remembered the feel of his gaze—not predatory, not proprietary. Just... present. Heavy in its attention. Real in a way she hadn’t prepared for.
Outside, the sky had paled into a soft pewter wash. The grounds stretched beyond, pristine and manicured, but still. Raven traced the edge of the curtain with two fingers. She told herself she was waiting for him to finish the call. That she was standing guard. That this wasn’t something else.
Minutes passed. Five. Maybe ten. She lost count.
And then, behind her, the door opened.
Lucian entered without warning, stopping short when he saw her by the window. His expression shifted—just slightly. Surprise, followed by something unreadable. Something softer.
She turned, slow, unreadable. "I wasn’t waiting," she said first.
He didn’t move closer. "But you didn’t leave."
She studied him now, eyes sharp even in stillness. "You don’t give orders like you used to."
"You don’t follow them like you used to."
The silence returned—but it wasn’t hollow this time. It was full of everything they hadn’t said since the courtyard. Since before the courtyard. It vibrated with a tension that had no clear shape yet, only edges.
Lucian stepped forward, slowly, until there was barely a breath between them. She didn’t step back.
"Why did you stay?"
She didn’t look away. "Because I was told to."
"Not by Maxim. By you. The you that looked at me that day and let me see the fracture. The one you never show anyone."
Her throat tightened. A flicker passed over her face—too brief to name, but not to miss. "And what did you see, exactly?"
He exhaled, not as a man who triumphed, but as one who recognized defeat and stepped into it anyway. "I saw that you're not just here to keep me alive."
She didn’t deny it. Couldn’t.
His voice dropped, quiet. "And I know... because I’m not just here letting you."
The words hung between them, raw and unfinished. The air shifted—not with threat, but with gravity. With the weight of two people standing too close to a truth they’d both been trained to ignore.
And then, as if something long buried finally surfaced, it occurred to him—not with certainty, but with the quiet weight of truth:
‘Maxim didn’t just send her to guard my life. He sent her to remind her she still has one.’
And maybe, standing here now, Lucian finally understood why.
Some silences don’t beg to be broken—they ask to be understood.
—To be continued.
