The air in the hallway leading to Alexander's study felt distinct, as if the oxygen had been replaced by the heavy, suffocating weight of a past that refused to stay buried. Eva stood before the mahogany door, her fingers dug so deeply into the platinum ring hidden in her palm that the metal bit into her skin.
She didn't just walk into the room; she surrendered to it. As the door creaked open, her heart hammered a frantic, irregular rhythm against her ribs—a chaotic mix of visceral terror and a starving, desperate longing. The scent hit her like a physical blow: Royal Oud and the faint, metallic tang of his favorite tobacco. It was so fresh, so alive, that for a fleeting second, her eyes scanned the shadows behind the desk, expecting him to rise from his chair with that sharp, knowing smile.
Her breath hitched, hitching in her throat as she spotted the crystal ashtray on the desk. A single cigarette rested there, a thin, ethereal ribbon of blue smoke curling upward, dancing in the draft from the open window.
Eva's knees grew weak, her body swaying as a wave of emotional vertigo swept over her. Her lower lip trembled, and a single, hot tear finally escaped, carving a path through the pale dust on her cheek. She stepped closer, her hand reaching out toward the smoke with the agonizing slowness of someone trying to touch a dream before it shattered. Her fingers hovered over the desk, feeling a warmth that shouldn't have been there.
Behind the wall of the study, in a narrow, lightless corridor that smelled of cold stone and isolation, Alexander stood behind the one-way mirror. His frame was rigid, his knuckles white as he leaned his weight against the glass. His eyes, sunken and shadowed by months of sleepless warfare, tracked Eva's every movement with a predatory, agonizing intensity.
Internally, he was being torn apart. Every sob that escaped her lips felt like a blade twisting in his chest. His rage toward Marcus had transformed into a silent, hollow ache; seeing the woman he worshiped crumbling into pieces because of the very mystery he had created was a hell of his own making. He clenched his jaw so hard his muscles spasmed, his palm pressed against the glass exactly where hers was on the other side. He was a man drowning in the dark, watching the only light he had ever known flicker and fade.
Suddenly, Alexander saw something Eva hadn't noticed yet.
Under the pale moonlight filtering through the window, a wet handprint was slowly evaporating on the polished wood of the desk, right beside the burning cigarette.
Eva's gaze fell upon it, and her eyes widened until they were twin pools of shock. It wasn't just a print; it bore the distinct mark of a jagged scar across the palm—the scar from the climbing accident in Switzerland, the one she had bandaged with her own hands.
She let out a broken gasp, a sob that sounded like a prayer. "Alexander..." she whispered, her voice fracturing in the silence. "I know you're here. Stop torturing me... please."
In response, the cigarette was suddenly snuffed out as if by an invisible hand. The heavy leather desk chair groaned, sliding back slowly across the hardwood floor to reveal a deep red envelope tucked into a hidden compartment beneath the desk.
On the front, in that bold, slanted script that commanded her soul, were the words: "Eva... go to Paris. Find the key before they find you."