It was not only burning, it was howling. A thin, furious cry rose as fire devoured the vinyl, bending the sweet memory of London into a grotesque parody, a glistening melt of grief and noise.
Elara Vance did not flinch. She watched in silence, her gaze as cold and unwavering as the surgical steel she wielded to lay hearts open.
"Listen, Mark," she said. Her voice, a low deliberate hum that filled the soundproof room. "That's the sound of the future slipping from your hands. The Sundays shared, the anniversaries never had, the quiet years you will never touch. Let it burn. Let it all burn."
Mark, the financier whose suit cost more than her first car, stood trembling. Tears carved uneven lines down his face as he nodded, quick and desperate. "Yes. Yes, it's gone."
This was Elara's craft, not therapy, but the art of controlled destruction. She did not fix people, she dismantled them. And the Bay Area's wealthy and damaged paid well for the privilege.
Back in her stark white office, the scent of smoke and sage clung to her like an impression. She allowed herself one breath of stillness. The high of another successful closure thrummed beneath her skin. It was that feeling. That silk thin invisible thread. It was her favorite illusion. It was her fiercest addiction. It was control.
The door flew open before Elara could speak.
Maya, her assistant stood there, her face blanched and voice thin with urgency. "Elara, we have a problem."
"Unless the building is on fire, it can wait," Elara said, her tone even and her gaze fixed on the screen.
Her polished wheat blonde bob framed her face, each strand falling neatly to her jawline. Her crystalline grey eyes remained locked on the typography, cold, exacting and unblinking. And under the chandelier's glow, her bow shaped lips shimmered.
It is a client of V.I.P. status," Maya said, her breath hitching. "He came through the platinum back channel. The fee is not even a number. It is a blank check. And the NDA is thicker than my entire thesis."
Elara finally lifted her gaze, a faint spark of curiosity slipping through her composed exterior. "Who is it?" she asked, her voice cool but edged with interest.
Maya swallowed. "He didn't give a name. Just a code. Prometheus."
A cold shiver ran down Elara's spine. Prometheus? The Titan who stole fire, the one who defied the gods? The name hung in the air, dredging up a mythology she once loved and then learned to forget.
"Send the dossier," Elara said, tighter than she meant.
The file arrived. No name. Only the codename: Prometheus. She opened it.
A video file materialized on the screen and played almost immediately.
At first the man was only a silhouette in a sleek chair, backlit by a floor-to-ceiling window and the glitter of the city at night. He leaned forward into the light and Elara's breath stopped.
It was him.
Leo Thorne.
The boy she had loved was gone. In his place sat a man sculpted from marble and shadow, his features sharpened by time. His face planes harder. The lines at his eyes carved by sleepless nights and stress. His hazel eyes, once warm with laughter, had the cold, focused calm of someone who had learned to survive by killing his feelings. He looked straight into the camera as if trying to pierce into her soul.
"Elara," his voice rumbled, stripped of tenderness and tuned to command. "Eight years ago I made a mistake, a catastrophic one. I have spent every day since building an empire to outrun that memory and I have failed."
He paused. His gaze sharpened.
"They say you are the best. That you can burn the past away. I do not want guidance. I want scorched earth. Tear it out of me, root and stem. The target is my attachment to a certain Elara Vance". He said, smirking too quickly for a frown to appear on his face just in time to notice Elara's frozen state.
Elara looked harder than usual. Leo has always been blunt, but was he this blunt? An attachment to her. Hasn't he moved on?
Her thoughts crashed against each other, a thousand unfinished sentences dissolving into static. The world seemed to tilt off its axis and sound seeped out of the room until only a hollow, trembling silence remained.
"My time is valuable. So is yours ". The hazel eyed man behind the screen continued, overlapping her voice and giving no chance for her reply. "I'm not asking. I'm retaining your services. The contract is signed. See you Thursday! "
The screen went black.
Silence rang in the room. The air turned to ice. Elara's hands clenched until her nails bit crescents into her palms. A tremor, fierce and instinctive, started somewhere deep and old.
He hadn't asked. He had commanded. He had barged into her life not with apology, but with a declaration of war disguised as business.
The humiliation, the shattered love, the raw searing pain of her graduation day surged through her, washing away the composed professional she had carefully built. In its wake, she saw herself at twenty two, curled on the dorm room floor and sobbing uncontrollably.
A hot tear streaked down her flawless makeup. "Damn you, Leo," She whispered, slamming her hand onto the desk, "Damn you to hell."
All these years, and he chose today to taunt her? No, she can't let it slide. She will take it for him. Yes, she will. Not for money, not for prestige, not for professionalism. She will take the job for him. For the chance to look him in the eye, to let him feel the burn he has etched into her soul, and to claim the reckoning she has carried for eight long years.
" Thank you for the therapy " Mark appreciated pulling Elara from her thought.
" Oh… yeah" She regained her composure. " You may leave now. Please, call in Maya after you. We got a problem to handle "