Closing time felt heavier than usual.
Elena dragged down the shutters, her hands trembling despite her best efforts to appear calm. The street outside was quiet, washed in the golden haze of streetlamps. Customers were gone, coworkers already headed home. She was alone.
At least, she hoped she was.
Her heart pounded as she double-checked the locks. Every instinct screamed that he was near. He had said it so casually, like a fact written in stone: See you tonight.
She stepped out into the night air, pulling her coat tight. The autumn chill bit at her skin. Her apartment was only a ten-minute walk away. Ten minutes of silence, ten minutes of shadows, ten minutes of looking over her shoulder.
She lasted three.
"Elena."
The voice slid across the night like velvet, and she froze mid-step.
Adrian stepped out from the mouth of an alley, suit flawless even under the harsh glow of a streetlamp. He wasn't hiding. He never had to.
"You're stalking me." Her voice was raw, stripped of any pretense.
He smiled faintly, walking toward her with measured steps. "No. I'm watching over you."
Her laugh was brittle. "Is that what you tell yourself? That terrorizing me is protection?"
He stopped only a few feet away, close enough for her to catch the faint scent of him—smoke, cedar, something darker she couldn't name.
"Elena," he said quietly, "you're walking alone at night. Do you know how many eyes are on you right now? How many people would take what's mine if I didn't make myself known?"
Her chest tightened. "I'm not yours."
Adrian's gaze sharpened, silver-gray in the streetlight. "You are. You just haven't accepted it yet."
Something inside her cracked.
She shoved him, palms flat against his chest. He barely moved, but the motion jolted through her like lightning. "Stop saying that! You don't get to walk into my life and decide I belong to you. That's not how this works."
For the first time, his expression shifted. Not anger—something colder, heavier. "That's exactly how it works."
Her hands shook, but she didn't back down. "You can scare me. You can show up in my home, at my job, in the middle of the night. But you can't make me love you. You can't force that out of me."
His silence stretched long enough that her breath stuttered.
Then his smirk returned, slow and merciless. "Love?" He stepped closer, and she stumbled back until her shoulders hit the brick wall. "Who said anything about love, little dove?"
Her pulse spiked, her body taut with fear and something she refused to name.
"I don't need your love," Adrian whispered, his hand brushing the wall beside her head. "I need your fire. Your fight. That's what makes you different from all the others. That's why you can't run."
Tears burned the edges of her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. "You don't get to decide my life."
His gaze softened in a way that was somehow worse than his smirk. "Then prove it."
"What?"
"Prove me wrong. Push me away. Walk into the night and pretend you'll never look over your shoulder for me again." He leaned in, his breath hot against her ear. "Go ahead, Elena. Convince yourself you can live without me watching."
Her heart hammered. Her body screamed to run. But her feet refused to move.
Adrian drew back slowly, studying her face as though he already knew the truth.
"You can't," he murmured.
Then, with infuriating calm, he stepped back, straightened his jacket, and walked past her down the street as if he owned the night itself.
Elena slid down the wall, her knees weak, her breath shuddering.
She hated him. She feared him.
But most terrifying of all—she hated the voice inside her whispering that maybe he was right.