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I had his complete attention. My gaze drifted, despite myself, to his mouth. When I looked up again, he had moved closer. Not by much, but enough that I knew what would happen if neither of us moved away. Without thinking, I lifted my chin to meet him. The moment balanced on a point, and I leaned into it.

Then the balance shifted.

Not toward me, but away. Barely perceptible but unmistakable. He had stepped back, and the space he left behind felt cold where his warmth had been.

“Forgive me,” he said quietly.

He didn’t elaborate. He looked at me for one more moment before turning and walking back through the open balcony doors.

I remained where I stood. Below me, the gardens remained still as the rain fell. I could not explain what had just happened. I couldn’t explain the entire evening. I only knew that somewhere between the kiss against my wrist and the moment he stepped away, I wished he had chosen to stay.

* * *

Alexander

The library was dark except for the fire.

I did not turn on the lights. I did not pour myself a drink, although I did consider it. Instead, I paced across the room.

I had walked back from the opera house through private corridors, taken the elevator alone, and entered my suite without removing the mask until the door was closed behind me. It rested now on the piano. I looked at it, grateful that it had served its purpose.

I wore the mask because I wanted to delay recognition. But some part of me hoped that Emilia would recognize me and still lean into me.

Rain beneath glass.

I had offered it as a hint. Her reaction told me she understood. She remembered saying those words to me. After that, every moment seemed to draw her closer to me. I saw her watching me when I was speaking to one of the senior physicists. I chose not to examine how much I enjoyed being noticed.

By the time we reached the balcony, I was no longer thinking about being the Chairman of Blackwood Hall. I was simply a man who wanted her. Her pulse quickened beneath my lips. Feeling her respond to me made it considerably harder to remember why I had intended to stop there. Before I had consciously decided to, I stepped closer. It was at that moment that she looked up at me. I only needed to close the distance, but I chose to step away instead. The next time I kiss her—or she kisses me—there will be no mask. She will know exactly who she is choosing.

My cell phone buzzed next to me. Marcus. I answered and he started talking before I greeted him.

“I apologize for the hour,” he said. “Security flagged this in the last thirty minutes. I felt you should be informed tonight.”

“What happened?” I asked.

Marcus explained that there had been a data breach. The incident had not triggered an alarm. No data had been deleted. No obvious disruptions had been caused. As expected, the systems had performed within normal parameters.

The target was two subdirectories within the Project Aurora data drive. The trial design and the pathway inhibition data from the most recent studies.

“When did this happen?”

“The access window opened at ten forty-seven this evening.”

The masquerade was well underway at that time. Someone had chosen their moment well.

“Internally?”

“That is still unknown. The access point suggests familiarity with the system’s architecture. The targeted files were not indexed in any external documentation.”

“They knew what they were looking for,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Would anyone from Project Aurora be notified of this breach?”

“Not under the current protocol.”

I considered that. Emilia deserved to know someone had accessed the files. Until we understood the method, I had nothing useful to give her except a reason to worry.