A Kiss For Three

chapter 11

As much as I wanted to go back—up there, under those strings of café lights where everything had felt suspended—I didn’t.

It had been a full day since Nico’s message, and I still hadn’t answered. Every few hours I caught myself staring at the screen, my fingers hovering just above the keyboard, aching to type something easy and stupid like sure or what time. Every time, I stopped myself.

Wanting to be stupid was dangerous.

I reminded myself that someone had been following us, someone smart enough to stay unseen. Walking straight into another rooftop night would have been a gift to whoever was behind those photographs. It would have been naïve. Idiotic. And yet the thought of saying no—of not seeing them—hurt more than I wanted to admit.

So I stayed where I belonged: inside four walls, behind a locked door, drowning in work that felt safer than breathing.

My office hummed with its usual ghosts. The laptop glowed cold blue in the dark. Outside, the city was alive—sirens curling through the distance, voices rising from the street, laughter spilling out of some bar that never closed. A life I wasn’t part of.

On my screen sat a picture I shouldn’t have been looking at: Adrian and Nico, standing side by side at a press event, smiling for the cameras. Suits sharp, charm weaponized. Two men everyone wanted something from. I was supposed to be one of those people, too.

But then…

Then I just stared at them. The curve of Adrian’s grin, the way Nico’s posture tilted slightly toward him as if they were still boys sharing some private joke. I could feel it again—that quiet pulse of peace that I only seemed to find when I was near them. It felt wrong to crave it. Wrong, and irresistible.

My chest tightened.

Longing. Shame. Anger at myself for being weak enough to feel any of it.

I tried to push it down, focusing on the files spread across my screen—financial records, background reports, surveillance logs. It was all supposed to mean something, supposed to bring me closer to proving what Serena and Camille had hired me to prove. But every line blurred. Every number folded into static.

Because underneath the work hummed a new rhythm: What if this had all been a game?

What if Adrian and Nico had planned everything—the rooftop, the laughter, the softness? What if they’d wanted me close so they could control the narrative? Maybe they’d hired someone to take those photos themselves, to make me panic, to corner me. After all, I had entered their lives pretending to destroy them. Maybe this was their revenge, slow and beautifully cruel.

The thought slid down my spine like ice.

I shook my head, but the paranoia kept digging.

Maybe Nico’s sweetness was just strategy. Maybe Adrian’s warmth was data collection. They had power, connections, money. They could have ruined me with one phone call, one headline.

I rubbed my temples hard enough to hurt.

The knock at the door made me jump.

Before I could speak, it opened, and Daniel stepped in, wrapped in his heavy coat, a scarf crooked around his neck.

“Hey, loser,” he said, like always. His voice sliced through my spiraling thoughts like a rope thrown into deep water. “Possibly got a lead for you. Interested?”

I was on my feet before I even processed the words. “A lead?”

He grinned faintly, that half-crooked smirk that said he wasn’t sure if I’d thank him or kill him by the end of the night. “Yeah. Managed to trace back the number that sent you those pictures—to a physical location.”

Adrenaline surged through me so fast I almost felt dizzy. “Where?”

“Not far,” he said, jerking his head toward the door. “Come on. I’ll explain on the way.”

We left without another word. The city outside was sharp and cold, wet asphalt shining under streetlights. Daniel led, his hands shoved into his pockets, and I matched his pace, my heartbeat too loud in my ears.

He told me what he’d found as we walked. “Whoever it is covered their tracks well. But I got a ping off one of the routing servers—they used a public access point here in the city. Tiny apartment complex, probably just passing through, but it’s all we’ve got.”

I followed him through narrower streets until the skyscrapers faded into cracked walls and peeling paint. The building he stopped in front of looked ancient, the kind of place landlords forgot existed. Faded bricks. Rusted mailboxes. Windows dim with dust.

“This is it,” Daniel said.

The main door was locked, obviously. I knelt without a word, pulling a small tool from my coat pocket. The metal clicked softly as I worked, muscle memory taking over.

“Still scary how good you are at that,” Daniel muttered.

I was about to make some smart remark when the door swung open from the inside.

Both of us froze.

An elderly woman stepped out, bundled in a floral coat and a wool hat. She blinked at us through thick glasses. “Oh my! I’m so sorry, dears—were you coming in?”

Daniel’s mouth opened, closed. “Uh, no, ma’am. Just—checking the address. Wrong one, I think.”

She smiled, soft and harmless. The kind of smile that could make the cruelest man hold a door open. “Well, you have a lovely night then.”

She tottered past us down the steps and disappeared into the glow of the nearest streetlight.

Daniel exhaled a quiet laugh. “So much for our criminal mastermind.”

I straightened, brushing dust from my hands. The anticlimax hit like a slap. “Perfect. We just terrified someone’s grandmother for nothing.”

“Not nothing,” he said. “It confirms the trace was remote. They used the building’s connection. Probably moved on already.”

“Great.” My voice dripped acid. “So we’re back to square one.”

We started walking, the night folding around us again. I ranted without meaning to, my frustration spilling over. “I’m so sick of this—of chasing ghosts, of people hiding behind screens. Whoever this is, they’re watching everything, and we’re just walking targets—”

Then I stopped.

Dead still.

Daniel nearly bumped into me. “What—?”

I didn’t answer. Because ten feet ahead, standing beneath the jaundiced glow of a streetlamp, was Adrian.

Hands in his pockets. Collar turned up. Eyes fixed straight on me.

The air between us hummed, alive and electric.

“Well,” Daniel muttered under his breath. “That’s… not awkward at all.”

I barely heard him.

Because at that very moment, my mind stopped thinking and my heart began feeling.