My pulse spikes hard enough that the haptic monitor at my wrist taps once. Then again. A warning vibration, small and private beneath the cuff of my shirt.
Dorian hears nothing. Or he pretends not to.
"Luca isn't a symbol."
"Of course not. He's a person." The answer's immediate, perfect, impossible to attack. "But people connect to people. They trust recovery when they can see that recovery has a face."
My chair scrapes back as I stand. The sound's too loud in the sealed room.
For half a second, my vision goes bright at the edges. I grip the tablet case until the corner bites into my palm, using the pain to keep myself steady. Dorian doesn't move. He doesn't block the door. He doesn't touch me. He simply stands there, close enough that the bitterness of his scent keeps threading through every breath I try to take.
"Ember House isn't available for personal storytelling," I say. My voice isn't as cold as I want it to be, but it's steady enough. "Luca isn't part of your campaign strategy. If your team drafts even one concept using his recovery as public-facing material, the partnership ends."
Dorian's expression doesn't change except for the faintest softening around his mouth. "That's a useful boundary."
"No." I put the tablet in my bag and step away from the chair. "It's a wall."
I leave before he can answer.
The corridor outside is bright and too open, and I still can't get enough air. By the time I reach the elevator, my pulse is uneven, skipping and striking hard behind my ribs. I press one hand flat to the cool wall and stare at the numbers above the door while my wrist keeps tapping its quiet warning against my skin.
Nothing happened.
He didn't touch me. He didn't threaten Luca. He didn't say one sentence I could repeat to Luther without sounding like I'd turned a corporate conversation into a nightmare.
He stood too close. He used careful words. The room was sealed. I was already tired.
That's all.
I tell myself that through the elevator ride, through the lobby where Luther isn't yet waiting because the legal briefing must be running long, through the drive home under a low, gray sky. Every red light lasts too long. Every car behind me sits too close. When I pull into the driveway, I stay behind the wheel for several minutes, hands locked around nothing, breathing through the bitter ghost of Dorian's scent. There's scent-neutralizing spray in the glove box. I use it even though I know it won't fool anyone who knows me.
The house is loud when I open the door.
Noise spills toward me before I've got both feet inside. Rosalie's talking over Samuel, Samuel's shouting from somewhere low to the ground, and James is explaining something with the patient urgency he uses when no one's understanding the engineering fast enough. The air smells like laundry, dinner warming in the kitchen, Luca's vanilla-sweet nesting scent, Grayson’s steady calm, and the faint sugar-sticky trace of children who've negotiated more snacks than they were supposed to have.
It should settle me.
For one breath, it almost does.
Then Luca looks up from the entry to the kitchen, and his smile changes before it fully forms.
"Blake?"
I close the door behind me. "Hey, Cupcake."
He dries his hands on the towel he's holding and comes toward me. His expression's careful now, eyes narrowing slightly as he scents the air between us. "You smell strange."
My chest tightens. I open my mouth, but Rosalie reaches me first, barreling into my leg with enough force to make my knee bend.
"Blakey, daddy has stickers and they won't come off," she announces, grabbing my trouser leg with both hands. "He said no more, but his pants were boring."
From the living room, Grayson sits on the sofa with one ankle crossed over his knee and a line of glittery dinosaur stickers running down the side of his charcoal trousers. His face is composed. His eyes aren't. They flick to me once, sharp enough that I know he sees too much already.
"High-tack adhesive," he says. "A poor choice for wool."
"Papa, look," James calls from the rug before I can answer Luca. He sits surrounded by wooden blocks, gears, and one of Rosalie's hair ribbons tied between two towers. "It's a stabilizer. The fort collapsed because Samuel crawled through the load-bearing side."
"It wasn't collapsed," Samuel yells from under a drift of blankets. "I was inside it."
