Eli found Runa on the terrace later that night. She didn't announce herself—she had learned long ago to move through spaces without drawing attention, to become part of the background until needed. It was a survival skill, honed over years of watching and waiting.
She materialized from the shadows near the french doors, her presence signaled only by the faint scent of gun oil that clung to her clothes and the whisper of cool night air that followed her movement.
"I didn't ask you," Eli said quietly, her voice carrying just far enough to reach Runa's ears.
Runa turned, her face illuminated by the distant glow of the city sprawled below the estate. The lights made her look softer somehow, less like the terrified girl who had arrived weeks ago and more like someone learning to navigate the darkness. "I know," she said simply.
They stood in silence for a long moment. The space between them felt charged with unspoken things—gratitude, uncertainty, the weight of choices made without full consent. In the distance, a siren wailed and faded. The mundane sounds of a city that had no idea what happened within these walls.
"I'm sorry," Runa said finally, her knuckles white as she gripped the terrace railing. "I shouldn't have dragged you into this without asking. I just... I couldn't let it be Althea. She would have consumed me, turned me into something I wouldn't recognize. And I couldn't let it be Jason—I couldn't survive that." She paused, choosing her next words carefully. "You were the only choice that didn't feel like choosing my own destruction."
Eli studied her with those piercing blue eyes—so different from the dark Vale eyes her siblings had inherited, a reminder that she was always slightly apart from the rest of them. "Then why me? Out of everyone in this house, why me?"
It wasn't an accusation. It was genuine curiosity, tinged with something that might have been vulnerability if Eli allowed herself such things.
"Because if I have to honor this debt," Runa said, meeting her gaze unflinchingly, "if I have to marry a Vale and bind myself to this family and this life, I would choose you every single time." Her voice was steady, certain. "You protect without claiming ownership. You stopped when I said no. You take blows that would break most people, and you're still standing. That's not weakness, Eli. That's strength."
Eli blinked—the only sign of surprise she allowed, the only crack in her carefully maintained composure. "You don't know me, Runa," she said, and there was a warning in her voice. "You don't know the people I've hurt. The orders I've followed without question. The things I've done in the name of family."
"Maybe not everything," Runa conceded, taking a small step closer. The distance between them narrowed. "But I know that when you found Jason on top of me, you didn't ask questions or demand explanations. You just acted. You protected me when you had no obligation to do so, when it would have been easier to walk away." She gestured at Eli's cast, the bruises still healing on her face. "I know that matters."
"You think this is friendship?" Eli asked, her voice carefully neutral but masking a flicker of vulnerability she couldn't quite suppress. The word felt foreign on her tongue, like a language she'd forgotten how to speak.
"Yes," Runa replied firmly, with a certainty that seemed to surprise even herself. "I do."
Eli almost laughed—a dry, ghostly sound that barely qualified as amusement. "If that's true, you're terrible at choosing safe friends. The safest thing for you would be to keep your distance from everyone in this house. From me. Especially from me."
Runa smiled at her, and it was a gentle expression, steady and sure in a way that felt completely out of place in the Vale household. "Maybe," she said. "Maybe I am terrible at self-preservation. Or maybe I'm better at seeing people than you think."
Eli felt something shift in her chest, a tectonic movement in the landscape of her carefully ordered world. She realized something unsettling, something that made her pulse quicken and her defenses feel inadequate:
Runa made her feel seen. Not handled like Althea handled her, deploying her like a weapon or a shield when the situation demanded it. Not managed like Aurora managed all of them, manipulating emotions and outcomes like pieces on a chess board. Not feared like the debtors in the clubs feared her when she came to collect, their eyes sliding away from hers in terror.
Seen. Recognized. Acknowledged as a person with agency and value beyond her utility to the family.
As a person who mattered.
It was far more dangerous than any power play Roman could orchestrate, more threatening than any rival family or business deal gone wrong. To be seen was to be vulnerable. It meant someone could find the soft places beneath the armor and press on them, intentionally or otherwise. It meant caring about someone's opinion, their perception, their judgment.
It meant having something to lose.
Before the moment could deepen, before Eli could fully process the implications of what was happening between them, the glass doors burst open with sudden violence. Toni barreled out onto the terrace, her energy shattering the tension like a stone through glass.
"Okay, I officially love you!" Toni declared, throwing her arms around Runa with the easy affection of someone who had never learned to fear touch, who still believed in the possibility of genuine connection. "That was insane! Brave. Incredibly stupid. But mostly brave."
Runa laughed—a genuine, light sound that hadn't been heard in the estate for far too long. It was possibly the first real laugh she'd made since arriving, untainted by fear or politeness or the careful navigation of dangerous people.
Toni pulled back, practically vibrating with excitement, and turned her grin on Eli. "And you! My twin sister, the nightclub mogul. The downtown queen!"
"It's one club," Eli interrupted, though there was no real heat in her correction. She didn't pull away when Toni hooked an arm through hers, linking them together with the casual intimacy of siblings who had survived childhood by clinging to each other. "Jason has Two—well, one now. Althea has five. It's not exactly a promotion."
"Still," Toni insisted, her eyes bright with genuine pride. "Father trusts you with actual business now. Not just bodyguard duty or cleanup work. Real operational control." She waggled her eyebrows suggestively. "That's so hot."
"Please don't tell anyone you're related to me," Eli groaned, feeling heat creep up the back of her neck and into her cheeks.
"Too late," Toni said cheerfully. "I'm showing up opening night to tell everyone you used to cry when you stepped on bugs."
"I was six."
"Still counts." Toni's tone softened as she looked at Runa, her expression becoming more serious. "You made a good choice. Eli won't let anything happen to you."
"I know," Runa said, and the certainty in her voice made Eli's chest tighten in a way she didn't fully understand.
Toni linked arms with both of them, creating a chain of connection, and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper even though they were alone on the terrace. "So, when's the wedding? Do I get to help plan it? Please say I get to help plan it. I'm thinking emerald green for the color scheme. Very dramatic. Very—"
"Toni," Eli warned.
"What? You're getting married! That's exciting! Just because we're a crime family doesn't mean we can't have nice things."
Runa laughed again. "But you do have nice things. This house, the cars, the private jet, the—"
"You didn't hijack the planning when it was supposed to be Althea," Eli pointed out, raising an eyebrow at her twin.
Toni's expression turned sheepish. "I did! I mean, I tried. Mother and I both did. But Althea's decisions are like iron. Once she makes up her mind about something, there's no changing it. She wanted simple, clean, business-like. No fuss." Toni wrinkled her nose. "Boring, basically. But you're nicer than Althea, so maybe you'll actually let me add some personality to this thing."
"We'll see," Eli said, but there was the ghost of a smile on her lips.
For a moment, standing there between Toni's infectious joy and Runa's tentative hope, Eli allowed herself to believe this might not end in disaster. That maybe, against all odds and every lesson her life had taught her, she had been given something that wasn't born of duty or blood obligation. Something that wasn't about absorbing pain or taking bullets or being useful.
Something that was hers.
The thought was terrifying. It should have sent her running, should have triggered every defensive instinct she'd developed over nineteen years of survival. But beneath the fear was something else, something fragile and new that she didn't quite have a name for yet.
Something that felt dangerously close to hope.
Runa caught her eye across the small space, and there was understanding in that gaze. Recognition. The acknowledgment that they were both taking a leap into unknown territory, trusting each other with no guarantee of safety.
After Runa left.
Eli touched the railing where Runa's hands had been earlier, feeling the lingering warmth that her imagination supplied even though the metal was cold.
"We're a team now," she whispered to the empty terrace.
And somehow, that felt like a promise