The car door shut behind her with a soft, mechanical hiss.
The air out here was cooler—sharper somehow. The annex sat at the edge of the city's development zone, surrounded by overgrown tech parks and high-security research blocks that were long forgotten by the public.
It looked more like a villa than a corporate building.
Private gates. No guards. No visible cameras.
Just quiet.
Elna stepped onto the gravel path, her heels muffled by the thick silence. The house loomed ahead—sleek, dark-paneled, minimalist in design. Brutalist, almost. It looked like it had been carved out of shadow.
She hadn't told anyone where she was going.
The door to Neby's private annex clicked shut behind her with a finality that echoed in her spine.
The lights were dimmed to a golden hue here. Not broken — designed that way. The silence wasn't an absence of noise, but a decision as if this part of the building existed outside the rules of time and surveillance. The walls, lined with heavy books and dark wood, felt like a study more than a workroom. Like a confession booth masquerading as a sanctuary.
She stepped forward, slow, uncertain. Every step she took sank deeper into something she couldn't name. Her throat felt dry. Her fingers trembled around the printed report tucked under her arm.
Neby was leaning against the edge of his desk, arms loosely crossed, shirt sleeves rolled, collar undone, as though he had been expecting her all along. His eyes dragged over her like heat, making her pulse stumble. She could still remember those eyes when they used to look at her differently—when they held warmth instead of hunger, when they softened instead of burning.
"Elna," he said her name like a confession, like something he had been holding in his mouth for hours, tasting.
She stayed by the door, her hand still on the knob, as though that tiny motionless distance could protect her from the pull between them. But it didn't. It never did.
He stepped forward, unhurried, his gaze never leaving hers. "Do you know," his voice was velvet and shadow, "how long I've waited for you to come here… alone?"
Her chest ached because there was a time she might have wanted to hear that. A time when she would have smiled, maybe even stepped into his space, teasing back. But that was before. Before she knew how dangerous his devotion could be. Before she learned that desire, when twisted, could strangle.
"You shouldn't say things like that," she managed, her tone steady but her throat dry.
"Why not?" he asked, stopping close enough that she caught his scent—familiar, maddening, a trigger to memories she wished she could bury. "We both know there was something between us once. Tell me it's gone. Look me in the eyes and lie to me, Elna."
Her fingers curled at her sides. The truth was, she couldn't lie. The air between them was heavy, threaded with the remnants of an old affection she had never fully killed. But she could reject him. She had to.
"It's over," she whispered, forcing the words out like shards of glass.
His jaw tightened, but instead of stepping back, he leaned closer—his breath brushing her cheek, a whisper away from her skin. "You can't erase me from you. I see it… here." His fingertips hovered near her chest, not touching, but she felt the ghost of it anyway. "You feel it too. And it drives me insane."
Her heart was beating too fast, her breath too shallow. She could feel the temptation—hot, dangerous—coiling in the small space between them. And she hated that part of her still wanted to close that space.
But she didn't.She wouldn't.
"Don't," she said firmly, forcing herself to step back even though it felt like tearing a thread that had once tied them together. "Whatever you think this is, it's not love. And it's not something I'll let happen."
For a moment, his expression softened—not with defeat, but with the kind of longing that made her chest twist painfully. Then it hardened again, possession flaring behind his eyes.
"You'll come back," he murmured, almost to himself, before turning away.
Elna stayed frozen for a heartbeat longer, afraid to move, afraid that if she did, she'd run either toward him… or out the door.
The space between them felt like it was made of fire.He didn't touch her—not yet—but the way his gaze roamed her face was almost worse than a hand on her skin. It was slow, lingering, as if he were memorising her expression for some forbidden archive in his mind.
"Elna…" His voice was softer now, almost breaking. "You can't tell me you've forgotten what it was like… before you decided I wasn't enough."
Her breath hitched, though she tried to keep it steady. She had thought about it—about him—more times than she dared admit. Those days when they'd work late, sharing coffee and whispered jokes that no one else would hear. That quiet warmth, the ease between them… the almost-accidental brush of his hand on hers that had felt anything but accidental.
But that was before. Before the confession. Before the lines blurred. Before his obsession began to wrap itself around her like velvet chains.
"I haven't," she whispered. The admission slipped out before she could pull it back.
His eyes darkened, and he took one slow step toward her. Close enough now that she could smell the faint trace of his cologne—something warm, woody, with a bite at the end. It made her chest tighten.
"Then why are you fighting me?" His words were low, coaxing, almost tender—yet the undertone was sharp, insistent. "I could make you feel that again… more than that. You know I could."
Her pulse betrayed her, thrumming wildly in her neck, and his gaze followed it, lingering at the curve where it beat hardest. He didn't touch her, but she could almost feel the ghost of his lips there.
She closed her eyes for a second—just one second—to block the pull of him. In that darkness, she almost imagined leaning into him, letting his arms close around her the way they once had in that hazy half-dream of what could have been. But when she opened her eyes again, the reality was there—sharp, dangerous, unyielding.
"No," she said finally, her voice steadier than she felt. "I can't."
Something flickered in his expression—not anger, not yet, but something more dangerous: hurt, laced with hunger. "You won't," he corrected, his tone dipping into something.
And for a moment, the air between them stopped being warm—it was suffocating.