That night, the penthouse felt unfamiliar.
Not because anything had changed—
but because now, I could see it.
Every reflection in the glass walls felt like it had a delay. Every shadow felt like it was watching something that had already happened.
Reid and I sat in the dark, the city stretched out beneath us in a grid of light and power—alive, restless, ours.
And yet—
for the first time since we took it back—
it didn't feel entirely under control.
We didn't speak.
We didn't need to.
The silence between us wasn't empty. It was dense. Calculated. Full of everything we had already understood without saying a word.
The trap had worked.
Perfectly.
Elena wasn't just crossing lines anymore—she had erased them.
A thief.
A watcher.
An infiltrator.
A woman who had studied us so deeply that she thought she could become us.
Dangerous—
but more importantly…
predictable.
Reid finally broke the silence.
