The house had settled again into its usual stillness—the kind that felt too quiet, too deep. The storm had passed sometime before dawn, and the rain left behind a grey veil that clung to the windows. Outside, the trees stood dripping and motionless, the garden paths slick with mud and fallen leaves.
Inside, Seraphina stood at the threshold of her study.
She breathed in. Slowly.
This room was hers. Her sanctuary. Her creative war zone. It smelled faintly of old paper, bergamot, and cat fur. The bookshelves lined the walls, crammed with well-worn novels, dusty first editions, and literary clutter no one else would care about. A soft armchair sat near the fireplace, draped with a plaid blanket she refused to replace. In the center of it all—her desk.
A heavy, walnut beast of a thing with drawers that always stuck and corners she'd bumped into at least a hundred times. Her laptop sat open on it, screen dark and accusing. Her favorite pen lay beside it, along with a half-filled journal and the remains of yesterday's cold tea.
She crossed the room and dropped into her chair, curling one leg under her and pushing her glasses up her nose. The light from the tall arched window spilled across the floor in a muted, sleepy haze.
Okay. Time to work. Time to write something worth the advance she was burning through faster than her patience.
She opened her laptop. The document loaded—her current novel-in-progress. Only forty-something pages in, and most of them made her want to walk into traffic.
She stared at the blinking cursor.
Typed a sentence.
Erased it.
Typed again.
Paused.
Erased again.
"Fucking hell," she muttered under her breath, dragging both hands down her face.
This was worse than writer's block.
This was writer's despair.
Her thoughts wouldn't hold still. Every time she tried to dive into her plot—murders, motives, cliffhangers—her mind dragged her back to him.
The man currently occupying one of her guest rooms.
The fed with a voice like broken gravel and a moral compass that was clearly missing several screws.
The man who had used her kitchen, eaten her food, insulted her cats, and made her feel like an intruder in her own home.
Konstantin Ivanov.
Even his name sounded like the start of a cold war.
She shook her head and tried again. This time, she got through two full paragraphs. Something about a body in a greenhouse. A trail of blood. The detective character was finally saying something useful when—
Click.
The door to her study opened. No knock. No warning.
She jerked her head up.
And there he was.
Of course.
Konstantin stepped into her sanctuary like he belonged there. Dressed in black again—black slacks, black shirt rolled to the elbows, the faintest glint of a gun holster under his arm. He moved without noise, like a shadow with muscle and attitude.
"What the hell are you doing?" she snapped, standing halfway out of her chair.
"I'm here to install cameras," he said, already glancing at the corners of the ceiling like he was mapping out a blueprint in his head.
"In my study?"
"In every room but the bathrooms and bedrooms."
"You didn't ask."
"I didn't need to."
Her jaw dropped. "You don't get to come in here like it's your jurisdiction. This is my workspace—my sanctuary. You can't just barge in and start screwing things into my walls like this is a government facility."
"I can," he said calmly, pulling a small black pouch from his belt and unzipping it. Inside were wires, a mini drill, screws, and tiny matte black security cameras.
"Don't even think about it," she said, stepping between him and the far wall. "I never agreed to cameras in here."
"I never asked," he replied without a flicker of emotion.
She blinked at him.
"That's not how consent works."
He looked at her then—his gaze piercing, sharp, but frustratingly calm.
"You're under federal protection due to circumstances you are not yet fully aware of. Until those details are declassified, my job is to keep you alive. And that means installing surveillance, whether or not your aesthetic sensibilities approve."
"Oh, my aesthetic sensibilities?!" she echoed, aghast.
He opened the drill.
She stepped forward, eyes blazing. "You touch that wall, and I swear I'll shove that thing so far up your—"
His expression finally twitched. Slight amusement. Infuriating restraint.
"You curse a lot for someone who owns three cats named after tortured poets."
"I write about murderers for a living, Ivanov. I could hide a body in this house and no one would find it for years."
"I'd find it," he said coolly.
They stood toe-to-toe in the center of the room, tension coiled tight between them. Seraphina's heart was thudding in her chest like it was trying to warn her of something she didn't want to admit. Not attraction—God, no. Just—
Friction.
And friction, in her experience, always led to fire.
He finally stepped around her, crouched by the wall, and started screwing the first mount into the corner near the ceiling. Seraphina groaned, rubbed her temples, and turned away before she threw something.
"Whatever. But I want one thing clear," she muttered. "My office is off-limits unless I'm here. No creeping around when I'm not looking. No touching my stuff. And don't even think about opening my drafts."
Konstantin didn't answer.
Didn't acknowledge.
Didn't even pause.
She glared at the back of his head.
"Are you even listening?"
"I always listen," he said without looking up.
God, he was exhausting.
She dropped back into her chair and glared at her screen. She couldn't write now. Not with him breathing the same air. Not with his scent—clean, faintly woodsy, and something else distinctly male—invading the room.
Maybe if she ignored him hard enough, he'd vanish like a bad plot twist.
But she had a feeling nothing with Konstantin Ivanov was ever that easy.
---------
The moment Seraphina leaned back in her chair, her spine cracked with a series of satisfying little pops that made her wince and sigh all at once. She had been glued to the screen for hours, fingers typing with manic energy, the kind that only came in frantic waves and left you drained like you'd just outrun a wildfire.
Two full chapters.
That was a miracle.
Not polished. Not perfect. But they were there. On the page. Bleeding from her mind onto the screen like proof she still had some talent left.
She sat there for a moment, dazed, eyes burning slightly from staring at the bright monitor too long. The faint buzz of caffeine withdrawal settled behind her eyes, and her shoulders ached from hunching over her desk. It was the kind of ache that always whispered:
> You're burning out again, aren't you?
She pushed that voice away.
Stretching her arms overhead, she let out a groan and cracked her neck, only to have it echoed by a soft ping from her laptop.
She frowned.
An email notification slid into view.
> SUBJECT: Final Reminder – Fan Signing Event: July 6th @ 1PM
FROM: Management Agency, Ink & Iron Literary
Her stomach dropped.
"Oh, fuck me," she muttered.
She clicked it open reluctantly, even though she knew exactly what it said. She'd been dodging the mental note for a week, convincing herself it was next weekend. But no—her publisher had confirmed it. Her assistant had reminded her. Twice.
It was tomorrow.
The dreaded fan signing.
Another round of forced smiles, fake laughter, awkward selfies, and endless questions she couldn't answer without violating her NDA. And the worst ones?
> "When's the next book coming out?"
"Are you almost done with it?"
"Why'd you kill off him in the last one?"
"Can you PLEASE make the next one less… dark?"
> No. I can't. That's how I process the void in my soul, Karen.
She groaned and dropped her forehead to the desk with a dull thump.
She was two weeks away from the deadline for her next book. It wasn't finished. It was barely breathing. And tomorrow she had to go out into the real world, wear lipstick, and pretend she wasn't spiraling into creative ruin.
"I'm two seconds away from jumping out this window," she mumbled into the desk.
"Do it and I'll install bars," came a voice from the hallway.
Her head shot up.
She glared at the closed study door. "Were you eavesdropping?"
No answer. Of course not.
Typical Konstantin.
The man was part shadow at this point.
She slumped in her chair and glanced at the clock. 2:03 PM.
Still early, and yet her brain felt like it had been grinding gears since dawn. She needed a break. A reset. Something that didn't involve words or murder plots or federal agents judging her life choices.
She needed fresh air.
She closed the laptop gently, stood, and stretched again. Her joints cracked in protest. She stepped into her slippers and reached for the cardigan slung over the back of the door, tugging it on over her old T-shirt and leggings.
The air inside the house had grown stale with tension—unspoken, heavy. And she was suffocating under the weight of it.
She walked out of the study, passing through the quiet hallway with its creaky floorboards and framed photographs—some hers, some her grandmother's, untouched since the day she vanished.
At the end of the hall, the sunlit doorway led to the back veranda.
She slid open the old glass door and stepped outside, greeted by the kiss of cool, early-afternoon breeze. It smelled like damp earth and roses. The rain had cleaned the world, left everything dewy and fragile and beautiful.
Her garden was overgrown but still lovely in a forgotten way. Vines crawled along the white iron fence that framed the stone path. Hydrangeas and ivy clustered around the base of the old bench, and wildflowers swayed lazily in the wind. The old oak in the far corner towered protectively, its leaves dripping with silver drops.
This place had once been her grandmother's domain. Now it was hers. She hadn't done much to maintain it, but there was still life here. Messy, overrun, imperfect life.
And right now, it was exactly what she needed.
She took slow, deliberate steps down the path, arms crossed against the chill in the breeze. The sun peeked through the clouds, casting dappled light through the trees, warm on her cheeks, almost comforting.
A butterfly danced near her face, then flitted away.
She sat on the iron bench at the far end of the garden and stared at the small pond beyond the fence. Her grandmother used to sit here with her in the afternoons, sipping tea and talking about the plants as if they were old friends. Seraphina remembered how she'd once named every flowerbed like they were characters in her own little garden novel.
> God, I miss her.
A tightness bloomed in her chest. Not grief exactly—at least not the loud, ugly kind. This was the kind that came years after the loss. The dull, gnawing ache of uncertainty. The part of her that couldn't accept that her grandmother had just… wandered off.
She knew something was wrong. She had known the moment it happened. And no one had listened. Not until Ellie Grant. Not until he showed up.
Seraphina leaned back, tilted her face to the sky, and closed her eyes. The breeze tugged at the ends of her hair, soft and cool. For a moment, the world was quiet.
No deadlines. No fans. No knives in the dark or cameras being drilled into her study.
Just the wind and the damp earth and the sound of birds rustling in the trees.
> You need this. Just five more minutes of peace before the world intrudes again.
She exhaled slowly.
And somewhere, not too far off, the crunch of footsteps echoed faintly on gravel.
Her eyes snapped open.
Of course.
She didn't turn around. Didn't move. She knew exactly who it was.
Only one man walked like that. Heavy but silent. The weight of a weapon and secrets in every step.