Selina crouched beside the desk afterward and tried opening the drawer Daniel had used earlier.
It wasn't even locked.
Which honestly made her question what exactly went wrong in this man's upbringing.
Nobody casually stored artifacts worth millions inside an office drawer without security unless they were either incredibly stupid or terrifyingly confident.
Selina personally leaned toward the second option.
"Honestly," she muttered while pulling the drawer open, "people like you are the reason thieves like me exist."
Valuable things were supposed to be protected properly. Otherwise eventually someone would steal them. That was practically a law of nature in Gotham.
Then she looked inside the drawer.
And froze.
Empty.
No giant gemstones.
No fist-sized blue diamond casually capable of funding small countries.
Selina frowned immediately.
"Did he take everything with him?" she muttered quietly.
That was possible. Strange people with dangerous amounts of money tended to become paranoid eventually.
Her eyes slowly shifted toward the painting hanging on the wall behind the desk afterward.
Well.
At the very least, she could still take the painting.
Selina stepped closer and reached toward the frame carefully. The instant her fingers touched it, the floor beneath her disappeared.
Darkness swallowed her completely.
It felt less like falling and more like being dragged through something endless and cold, shadows twisting around her fast enough to make her lose all sense of direction.
"What the hell—"
Before she could react properly, light exploded across her vision and she was suddenly thrown back out of the darkness.
Selina crashed into warm water with a loud splash.
Water soaked through the catsuit immediately as she surfaced in irritation, pushing wet hair away from her face while trying to understand what just happened.
Then she realized she wasn't sitting in an empty bathtub.
She was sitting on someone.
More specifically—
On a very firm, very muscular stomach.
Selina slowly looked down.
Daniel was laying in the bathtub beneath her, one arm resting lazily along the edge while steam rose around them from the hot water.
He looked completely relaxed despite a thief literally falling out of darkness into his bath.
"Ummm…" Daniel said thoughtfully while looking up at her, "you know, if you planned to rob me, the bathroom was probably the worst place to search."
Selina stared at him without speaking.
Daniel glanced around the bathroom afterward.
"There's really nothing valuable in here to steal."
His eyes moved back toward her afterward.
"Well. Besides me, obviously."
Silence immediately followed.
Selina looked at Daniel.
Daniel looked at Selina.
Steam quietly drifted upward around them while both tried to process how this somehow became a real situation.
Then Selina's survival instincts finally activated.
She immediately pushed herself out of the bathtub and landed on the bathroom floor, already turning toward the door to escape before this became even more embarrassing.
"Umm," Daniel started from behind her, "the floor is really slippery—"
Before he could finish, Selina's foot slid forward.
"Oh, come on—"
She lost balance instantly and fell backward straight into the bathtub again with a loud splash.
This time she landed directly against Daniel, one arm thrown over his shoulder while water spilled over the sides of the tub.
For a second neither of them moved.
Selina slowly closed her eyes in pure frustration.
Daniel looked at the ceiling thoughtfully.
"You know," he said carefully, "running away usually works better when gravity cooperates."
Selina's embarrassment lasted exactly two seconds before instinct took over again.
In one smooth motion she pulled a knife from her suit and pressed the blade against Daniel's neck while still half inside the bathtub with him.
"Tell me where those gems are," she said sharply. "Otherwise I'll slit your throat."
Daniel looked down at the knife resting against his skin.
Then he slowly looked back at Selina.
"You know," he said thoughtfully, "most relationships usually wait a little longer before reaching this level of trust."
"I'm serious," Selina warned while pressing the blade slightly closer.
Her expression had lost the earlier embarrassment completely. Now she looked focused again—calm, alert, dangerous. The playful thief vanished and Gotham's Catwoman remained.
Daniel noticed that shift immediately.
Honestly, it suited her.
"The gems are safe," Daniel replied calmly. "And before you ask, no, you can't steal them."
Selina narrowed her eyes. "You're very relaxed for someone with a knife against his throat."
Daniel glanced at the blade again.
"I've had worse skincare routines."
Selina stared at him for a second in disbelief.
"Are you incapable of taking anything seriously?"
"I take plenty of things seriously," Daniel replied. "Tax fraud. Bad coffee. People who put pineapple on pizza."
The knife remained against his neck.
Daniel remained completely calm.
Which, more than anything else tonight, was what genuinely bothered Selina.
This wasn't normal rich-person strange anymore.
Something about Daniel felt fundamentally wrong in a way she couldn't explain. One second she had been inside his office and the next she had fallen through darkness into his bathroom like space itself bent around him casually.
And his face…
The more she looked at him, the more familiar it seemed. Like she had seen him somewhere before.
Then Daniel spoke again.
"You know," he said while glancing at the knife against his throat, "I have a much bigger blade than yours."
Before Selina could react, darkness suddenly gathered beside the bathtub.
A massive black scythe slowly emerged from the shadows, its curved blade stopping near Selina's neck while cold energy spread through the bathroom air.
Selina's body stiffened instantly.
"So yeah," he said calmly while looking at the knife in her hand, "I'm really not afraid of small blades."
*****
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