Vivienne let the silence after her request sit just long enough to test whether he would try to improve it.

He didn’t.

The simple agreement landed more cleanly than reassurance would have. No negotiation. No attempt to make her justify the delay. Just acceptance, like she had named a term and he had the sense to leave it intact.

That, combined with the whiskey and the fact that she had not eaten since lunch, began doing something subtle but undeniable to the edges of her. Not enough to make her careless. Never that. But enough that the tightness in her shoulders eased by a fraction and the instinct to sand every line down to a blade no longer felt quite so urgent.

Then came the contract remark.

That got her.

Not visibly at first. Just the faintest shift at one corner of her mouth, there and gone, followed by the soft internal realization that she was more amused than she ought to be.

She lifted her glass slightly and looked at him over the rim.

“I already have one drafted,” she said. “I’m simply waiting for the right moment to trick you into signing it.”

The line came lighter than her usual register—still dry, still elegant, but with a little less ice in it than before. The whiskey was starting to work its way upward through the exhaustion, warming places that had been running purely on nerve for too many hours. She felt it most in the space between thought and speech. She was still choosing her words. She was simply choosing them with less restraint.

When he answered her question about the table, she listened.

Really listened.

No false indifference. No performance of selective attention to keep him from knowing she was interested. No polite, social version of curiosity that asked only enough to seem gracious and no more.

She watched him instead—the easy, matter-of-fact way he said it, the lack of drama, the offhand brush of his hand at the worn edge of the wood. The fact that he had fixed what mattered and left the scar there on purpose.

A reminder.

That, too, felt fitting in a way she didn’t entirely care to examine.

By the time he finished, Vivienne had gone still in a different way than before. Less guarded. More focused.

“That’s either impressively restrained,” she said, her gaze dropping briefly to the damaged edge of the table, “or mildly psychotic.”

A tiny pause.

“I haven’t decided which.”

But there was no real judgment in it. Only interest. Only the calm, open acknowledgment that yes, she wanted to know the shape of things that had marked him and remained visible in his apartment years later.

When he told her she could ask for the longer version, she did not rush to take it. The offer itself mattered more than the details just yet. She filed it away instead, something to return to once the room had settled more fully around them and the pile of papers on the table stopped feeling like a second heartbeat.

His read on her pacing herself earned no argument. It was annoyingly accurate, and at this point she was too tired—and too slightly, steadily buzzed—to waste energy denying the obvious.

The burn of the whiskey had softened into warmth now, moving through her on an empty stomach with a quiet insistence. Not enough to blur anything. Enough to loosen the line of her mouth when she spoke next.

“I would prefer not to discover my family’s criminal genius while half-fed and drinking your suspiciously honest whiskey,” she said. “So I trust you have something in that kitchen capable of absorbing alcohol and preventing catastrophe.”

Her eyes flicked briefly toward the kitchen and then back to him.

“Unless your plan is to let me become tipsy and emotionally volatile before handing me another document with my name on it.”

The line was teasing, and she knew it. More than that, she let it be.

Which, perhaps, was the more revealing thing.

Then he asked what she wanted to ruin next.

The question landed low.

Because the answer, the real one, came too quickly.

Her father. The Blackwell name. The velvet gown abandoned on the bathroom floor. And, in a quieter, more dangerous corner of herself she had been pretending not to look at too directly, her four-year celibacy streak.

Vivienne took another sip instead of saying any of that.

The whiskey slid warmer through her this time, the empty stretch where dinner should have been making itself increasingly known. She set her gaze on him, allowed herself one measured second of considering how much truth the room could survive, and chose the safer answer with the precision of someone who still knew when discretion was useful.

“Tonight?” she said.

Her mouth curved faintly.

“Your illusion that any of this is still under control.”

It was close enough to the truth to satisfy her.

Close enough, too, to the undercurrent she was no longer entirely bothering to hide.

She shifted deeper into the corner of the couch, one sleeve still swallowing part of her hand, bare feet tucked beneath her, and let her eyes drift once more around the room before returning to him.

“And perhaps,” she added, quieter now, “you should stop looking so pleased with yourself.”

A beat.

“I’m dangerously close to rewarding the behavior.”

Roman didn’t interrupt her rhythm.

He let her speak, let the edges of her soften and sharpen where they wanted, watched the way the whiskey was doing its quiet work without tipping her into anything careless. It was a controlled unraveling—intentional, even when she pretended it wasn’t.

The contract line earned a low, brief exhale from him—something just shy of a laugh.

“Yeah?” he said, tipping his head slightly, studying her over the rim of his glass. “I’ll read the fine print. Eventually.”

A beat.

“Probably sign it anyway.”

No bravado in it. Just the kind of answer that made it unclear whether he was joking or not.

When she called the table either restrained or psychotic, his mouth pulled faintly at one corner.

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive,” he said.

Easy. Unbothered.

Like he’d already decided which side of that line he stood on and didn’t need to explain it to anyone.

Then she pivoted—food, whiskey, strategy—and he followed without friction.

“Yeah, I’m not handing you anything else on an empty stomach,” he said, pushing off the table and heading toward the kitchen without waiting for further debate. “I’m not that reckless.”

Cabinet. Fridge. Movements efficient, familiar.

“Got eggs. Bread. Leftover pasta that survived me not caring about it earlier,” he called back, glancing over his shoulder at her. “Nothing curated. You’ll live.”

A pause as he grabbed a pan, set it on the stove.

“And if you get tipsy,” he added, tone dry, “it’s not because I engineered it. It’s because you walked in here after not eating all day and went straight for whiskey.”

There was no judgment in it. Just fact.

The stove clicked on. Low flame. Quiet domestic noise settling into the room like it had always belonged there.

When she answered his question—your illusion of control—that got his attention back fully.

Roman turned, one hand braced lightly against the counter, eyes on her now.

Something in his expression shifted. Not surprised. Not defensive.

Interested.

“Not much of an illusion,” he said after a second. “I know exactly how much control I’ve got.”

A beat.

“Just enough.”

It landed steady. Grounded. Like he’d measured it already and wasn’t particularly worried about the margins.

Then she told him to stop looking pleased.

That—

That almost got a real reaction.

His mouth tilted again, slower this time, more deliberate.

“I’m not pleased,” he said.

But the look in his eyes didn’t quite agree with the wording.

“Just… not surprised.”

He stepped away from the counter, closing a small part of the distance again—not crowding, just shifting the space between them into something more deliberate.

“You walked out of your father’s house with proof he built your life on a switch,” he went on, voice lower now, less casual but no heavier for it. “You didn’t break. You didn’t run.”

His gaze flicked once to the sleeve swallowing her hand, the way she’d folded into the couch like she belonged there now whether she admitted it or not.

“You came here. Took his system apart on the way out. And now you’re deciding the order you deal with it in.”

A beat.

That almost-smile again.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I’m going to look a little pleased.”

Not arrogant.

Certain.

Then her last line landed.

I’m dangerously close to rewarding the behavior.

Roman didn’t answer right away.

He held her gaze instead—steady, direct, no deflection in it now. Whatever was shifting between them, he didn’t try to step around it or soften it into something safer.

“Careful,” he said finally, voice low, even. “You start doing that, I might get used to it.”

There was no push in it.

No reach.

Just the acknowledgment sitting there, alive and unpolished, the same way everything else about him seemed to be.

Then, like it hadn’t just edged into something sharper, he turned back toward the stove, picked up the pan, and went back to making food.

Like both things—this and that—could exist in the same room without needing to be resolved immediately.

Vivienne watched him move through her answers without trying to tame them.

That, increasingly, was the thing about Roman that kept catching her off guard. He did not seem particularly invested in making her easier to handle. He simply met whatever she gave him and adjusted with it, as if sharpness were not a reason to retreat but merely another condition of the room.

When he said he would eventually read the fine print and likely sign it anyway, her mouth curved before she had fully decided to let it.

“An astonishing lack of self-preservation,” she said, turning her glass slowly between her fingers. “You’ll fit beautifully into the family archive.”

The line came out dry, but not cruel. There was too much ease in the room now for cruelty to hold its edge properly.

His answer about the table—that restraint and instability were not, in fact, opposing categories—earned a quieter look from her. She let her gaze drift once to the scarred wood and then back to him.

“That is, unfortunately, persuasive,” she admitted.

Then he crossed to the kitchen, and something about that—about a man who had just helped her rob her father now calmly opening cabinets and surveying the contents of his refrigerator—made the room tilt into a different kind of intimacy entirely.

Not dramatic. Not overt. Just strange in how ordinary it was.

Vivienne stayed where she was for a moment and watched him move through his own space with the same unceremonious competence he brought to everything else. Cabinet. Fridge. Pan. Flame. No performance in it. No attempt to make scarcity charming or domesticity masculine. Just a person making food because food was obviously needed.

She found that almost indecently attractive.

That realization was filed away and ignored with great discipline.

At the inventory he called back to her, her brows lifted by half a degree.

“Your standards continue to deteriorate by the minute,” she said. “Though I appreciate the warning.”

A beat.

“I assume the pasta has already suffered enough and should be left out of further conflict.”

The stove clicked on, low and practical, and the sound of it settling into the room felt unexpectedly grounding. Not because it solved anything. Because it did not try to. The whole apartment had that quality, she was beginning to realize. It did not ask her to become smaller or prettier or easier in order to be allowed inside it. It simply kept existing.

When he told her his control was not an illusion but a measured quantity, she looked at him over the rim of her glass with a calmer sort of interest than she would have allowed herself earlier in the evening.

“Yes,” she said. “You do seem irritatingly aware of your margins.”

And that, she thought, was likely the difference. Men like Charles believed control meant possession. Roman, for all his edges, treated it more like geometry—space, exits, timing, pressure, consequences. Less empire. More survival.

When he came closer again and laid out what she had done—East House, the system, the order in which she was choosing to survive the damage—Vivienne did not interrupt him. She could have. Could have deflected, undercut, dismissed the whole thing as operational necessity and moved on. Instead she let him say it, and the worst part was that she did not dislike hearing it from him.

Not because she wanted praise. Because he was accurate.

The room had gone very still by the time he admitted he had every intention of looking pleased with her.

Her hand tightened once around the glass, then loosened.

“That is a dangerous habit to encourage,” she said, though the line lacked the severity it might have carried earlier.

His answer to her warning about reward landed lower than she was prepared for.

Not in a way that embarrassed her. In a way that forced some honest, unguarded part of her to look up and register the shape of what was happening here without the usual defenses of timing, etiquette, and emotional misdirection.

So she held his gaze for one beat longer than necessary.

Then one more.

And when she finally answered, her voice came quieter than before—not softer, exactly, but less sharpened for impact.

“I suspect,” she said, “that if you got used to it, you’d become impossible.”

The line sat there between them with a warmth she did not quite mean to give it.

Then he turned back to the stove, and she was absurdly grateful that he did.

Not because she wanted distance. Because she liked, perhaps more than she ought to, that he seemed capable of letting a moment exist without grabbing at it. He went back to the pan as though flirtation and dinner prep and stolen family records could coexist in the same square footage without requiring immediate definition.

Vivienne found that steadier than she was prepared to admit.

She shifted on the couch, tucking the oversized sleeve back just enough to free her hand, and watched him from there with less pretense than she would once have allowed herself. There was nothing to be gained by performing indifference now. She was interested. In the apartment. In the table. In the way he moved through rooms. In the shape of him when he was not trying to be difficult for sport. In what kind of man could stand in front of a stove after a night like this and make the whole thing seem, if not normal, then at least survivable.

That curiosity felt more dangerous than most of what they had stolen.

Vivienne took another sip of her whiskey and let the domestic sounds keep happening—the quiet shift of the pan, the low flame, the small ordinary noises of someone preparing food while a dynasty unraveled on the table ten feet away.

Then, after a second, she said, “I should warn you that watching you do something as pedestrian as cook in the middle of all this is unsettling my understanding of several things.”

A small pause.

“Most of them, regrettably, are to your advantage.”

She let that sit, then leaned her shoulder a little more comfortably into the couch and added, with a drier kind of composure:

“So do try not to make a disaster of the eggs. I’ve already had one family catastrophe tonight. I don’t need a second one in a frying pan.”

Roman didn’t turn right away when she spoke.

He cracked the eggs one-handed into the pan, the sound clean and controlled, like everything else he did. A small tilt of the wrist, a quick check of the heat, then the low, steady sizzle settling into the room.

Only then did he glance back at her.

Her line about the archive got the faintest shift at the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t think your family keeps things that sign willingly.”

A beat.

“But I’ve been accused of worse decisions.”

It wasn’t bravado. Just acknowledgment that he knew exactly what he was stepping into—and hadn’t stepped out anyway.

When she conceded the table point, his eyes flicked briefly to it, then back to the pan.

“Told you,” he said. “You can keep both.”

Simple. Like it wasn’t a contradiction worth fixing.

At the comment about his standards deteriorating, he huffed a quiet breath, reaching for a spatula and nudging the eggs just enough to keep them from catching.

“You walked into Queens and didn’t leave,” he said. “Think we’re both making adjustments.”

There was no edge to it. Just fact, laid out the same way he’d been laying everything else out for her all night.

“The pasta’s fine,” he added. “You’re just not eating it tonight.”

His tone made it clear that wasn’t a suggestion.

When she called him aware of his margins, he nodded once, almost to himself.

“Only way it works,” he said. “You don’t know where the edge is, you fall off it.”

He didn’t dress it up. Didn’t soften it.

Just the rule.

Her warning about him becoming impossible if rewarded pulled his attention back again—this time longer.

Roman turned his head slightly, watching her from across the small distance of the room, something steadier settling into his expression.

“I already am,” he said.

Not defensive. Not joking.

Just… honest.

Then, quieter:

“You’re just noticing it now.”

He held her gaze for a second longer than necessary before turning back to the stove, breaking the moment himself instead of letting it stretch into something harder to step out of.

Her observation about him cooking—unsettling your understanding—earned a low exhale through his nose, something almost like amusement.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s the idea.”

He slid the eggs onto a plate, added toast without overthinking it, movements still efficient, still unbothered by the weight of everything else sitting ten feet away.

“You spend your whole life around people who make everything look expensive,” he went on, setting the plate down on the counter. “They forget how to do anything that doesn’t.”

He picked up a fork, turned back toward her, and crossed the room without hurry.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not important.”

He set the plate on the table in front of her, within easy reach but not crowding her space, then straightened.

Her last line—about not needing a second catastrophe in a frying pan—got a brief, real flicker of something lighter in his expression.

“You’ll survive the eggs,” he said. “I’m more worried about you surviving not eating them.”

He nudged the fork slightly closer to her with one finger.

“Eat,” he added, tone quieter now, not commanding but not optional either. “Then we ruin the next thing properly.”

He stepped back after that, giving her room again, leaning against the edge of the counter with his own glass in hand, watching her—not like she was fragile, not like she needed managing.

Just… there.

Steady.

Vivienne stayed quiet while he spoke.

Not out of distance. Out of attention.

From the couch, with one leg folded beneath her and the oversized sleeve slipping over her hand again, she watched him move through the kitchen with the same unshowy competence he seemed to bring to everything else. Eggshells cracked neatly. Heat adjusted without fuss. Toast dealt with before it became a problem. His answers came the same way his hands did—cleanly, with no wasted effort, no reaching for effect when fact would do.

It was a kind of steadiness she had not grown up around, and she found that she noticed it almost greedily.

When he said her family did not seem inclined to keep things that signed willingly, the corner of her mouth shifted before she could stop it. The line was dry. Accurate. A little too apt for the night they had both just survived.

She let that one sit.

Then he kept going, and she listened.

To the rule about edges. To the simple admission of his own impossibility, offered without bravado and therefore more dangerous than bravado ever would have been. To the way he spoke about expensive things as though they were not sacred, only inefficient when overdesigned.

That part got under her skin more than she expected.

Because he was right. She had spent her life around people who mistook polish for substance so consistently that they no longer knew how to recognize value if it arrived without a title, a board, or the correct kind of glass in someone’s hand. Roman had none of that, and yet he kept proving—quietly, repeatedly, infuriatingly—that he was one of the most competent men she had ever let into her orbit.

That should have made him easier to compartmentalize.

Instead, it kept making him harder.

And then there was the simpler problem.

He was beautiful in motion.

Not polished. Not precious. Not arranged for appreciation.

Just a man at a stove in shirtsleeves, cooking eggs with the same ruthless efficiency he had used on locks, access logs, and her father’s carefully maintained fictions. The line of his forearm when he reached for the spatula. The set of his shoulders when he turned toward her. The fact that he looked just as right breaking into a private archive as he did making toast in a kitchen too small for performance.

That, too, she noticed. That, too, she stopped trying to argue with.

By the time he crossed back to her with the plate, the apartment had shifted into something almost alarmingly intimate. Not because either of them had done anything overt. Because he had made food for her, and she was tired enough to let that matter.

The plate hit the table in front of her with more care than ceremony. Eggs. Toast. Simple, warm, immediate. The kind of thing she might once have dismissed as beneath notice and now found herself looking at with something uncomfortably close to gratitude.

When he told her to eat, she did not argue.

That probably said more than either of them needed it to.

Vivienne set her glass down first, then reached for the fork and cut into the eggs. The first bite was still warm enough to remind her all at once how long it had been since lunch and how completely her body had been surviving on adrenaline, spite, and whiskey since then.

The food did not transform the night.

It did, however, make the room feel more inhabitable.

She ate another bite. Then a piece of toast. Slow enough not to look famished, quick enough that neither of them had to pretend she wasn’t.

Across from her, Roman stayed where he was—leaning against the counter, glass in hand, present without hovering. He watched her in that irritatingly steady way of his, not like she was breakable, not like he expected thanks, just like he was paying attention because he had decided she mattered and saw no reason to disguise the fact.

That, more than almost anything else tonight, made something soften in her.

Not her standards. Never that.

Something else.

When she finally looked up at him again, there was less ice in her expression than before. Not none. Just enough less that the honesty to follow could pass through without cutting itself to pieces on the way out.

“You are very difficult to dismiss,” she said.

The line came direct and level and entirely unornamented.

Vivienne took another bite, gave herself a second, then continued with the same maddening precision she applied to everything else.

“Mentally,” she said first, because it mattered that she led with that.

A tiny pause.

“And, unfortunately for me, in several other ways as well.”

There.

No performance. No flirtation disguised as social sport. No retreat from the fact of it once spoken.

Her fork rested lightly against the edge of the plate as she studied him.

“I’m not mistaking competence for attraction,” she said. “Nor attraction for competence. You have managed the rare inconvenience of being both.”

The corner of her mouth moved faintly.

“It’s obnoxious.”

But she did not sound particularly distressed by it.

If anything, she sounded clearer than she had all evening.

Vivienne picked up the glass again, took a small sip this time rather than a larger one, and let the warmth settle before setting it back down.

Then she looked at the papers on the table. Then back at him.

“And since we’re being honest,” she said, “I didn’t come here only because you were useful.”

The sentence sat there quietly, weightier than the room should have allowed.

She did not rescue it.

Instead she reached for another piece of toast, more comfortable in his clothes now than she had been ten minutes ago, more comfortable in the apartment than she had any business becoming, and finished the thought with that same direct, unsentimental calm.

“I came here because I trusted you more than was strategically wise.”

A beat.

“I still do.”

There was no softness in the wording, but the vulnerability of it was unmistakable all the same.

She let him have that, then tipped her head slightly and added, with a flicker of her usual dry edge returning:

“So don’t become unbearable about it. I’m trying very hard to be open and honest, and I’d hate to be forced into murder immediately afterward.”

That got her a little closer to herself again.

She ate another bite, then finally gestured with the fork—small, elegant, almost absent-mindedly commanding—toward the counter.

“Sit down,” she said. “You made the food. You can at least pretend to be civilized long enough to eat with me before we reopen the case file on my life.”

Roman didn’t answer right away.

Not because he didn’t have one. Because he understood the weight of what she’d just set down between them, and he wasn’t about to bruise it by moving too fast or dressing it up into something easier to handle.

He watched her eat instead.

The first real food she’d had since before everything split open. The way she kept her pace controlled even when she was clearly hungry. The way her shoulders had dropped half an inch without her noticing. The oversized sleeve slipping over her hand again like she hadn’t decided yet whether to fix it or let it stay.

He took that in. All of it.

Then, finally—

“You’re not easy to dismiss either.”

His voice was quieter than before. Not softer. Just… more exact.

He didn’t elaborate immediately. Let it sit there with hers—balanced, not competing.

When she broke it down—competence, attraction, the distinction between the two—his mouth shifted slightly, something almost like recognition moving through it.

“Yeah,” he said. “I noticed.”

Not arrogant. Not smug.

Just agreement with a fact she’d already named.

At it’s obnoxious, he huffed a breath that might’ve been the closest thing to a laugh he’d given her all night.

“It is,” he said. “I was hoping you wouldn’t say it out loud.”

There was a flicker of something in his eyes then—brief, unguarded, gone before it could settle into anything she could pick apart.

Then she kept going.

And this time, Roman didn’t move at all.

Not when she said she didn’t come here just because he was useful.

Not when she said she trusted him more than was strategically wise.

Not even when she followed it with I still do.

That one landed.

He didn’t interrupt it. Didn’t soften it. Didn’t reach for humor to cut it down into something easier to carry.

He just held her gaze.

Steady.

Present.

Taking it seriously in a way that made it clear he understood exactly what she’d given him—and exactly how rare it was.

When he spoke again, it was lower.

“You shouldn’t.”

A beat.

“But I’m not gonna waste it.”

Simple. Direct. No performance.

No promise dressed up as something bigger than it was. Just the truth of what he intended to do with what she’d handed him.

Her threat about murder pulled something lighter back into his expression, the corner of his mouth lifting just enough to acknowledge it without undercutting anything that came before.

“Good,” he said. “I work better with clear expectations.”

Then she told him to sit.

That, finally, made him move.

Roman pushed off the counter, crossed the room without hesitation, and dropped into the chair across from her—not formal, not careful, just settling into the space like he belonged there.

Like she did now too.

He didn’t reach for the papers.

Didn’t even look at them.

Instead, he pulled a piece of toast from the plate, tore it in half with absent efficiency, and took a bite like this—this moment, this table, this strange, temporary quiet—was the thing that mattered right now.

Not the archive.

Not Charles.

Not the war waiting on the other side of the next five minutes.

Just this.

“You’re right about one thing,” he said after a second, glancing at her over the edge of the table.

“This part—” a small gesture with the piece of toast, indicating the room, the food, the pause between disasters “—this is the only control we’ve got tonight.”

Another bite. Calm. Grounded.

“So we take it.”

His eyes settled on her again, steady in that same way that had carried them through everything else.

“Then we go back to breaking things.”

The flicker in his eyes came and went too quickly for her to name.

Not enough for certainty. Enough for notice.

Vivienne caught it anyway—the brief, unguarded shift when he admitted he had hoped she would not say aloud that the situation between them was obnoxious. It vanished before she could decide whether it had been amusement, recognition, or something more dangerous than both, but the fact that it existed at all stayed with her.

She held his gaze a second longer because of it.

Then he told her she should not trust him. And that he was not going to waste it.

That landed harder than anything prettier could have.

Not because it was reassuring. It wasn’t. It was simply honest, and honesty had become rare enough tonight to feel almost luxurious. He had not promised permanence, goodness, or any other decorative fiction men liked to use when they wanted access to a woman’s softer instincts. He had only told her what he intended to do with the trust she had handed him.

Use it properly. Not waste it.

At this point, that was nearly indecently compelling.

She knew perfectly well that trust formed quickly could be broken faster still. If Roman gave her cause, she would cut the thread without ceremony. But he had not. Not once. Every step tonight had only made him more difficult to fault. More difficult, too, to set aside once the immediate usefulness of him should have passed.

Which meant she was left with the deeply inconvenient truth that he was, for the moment, the only person she could trust at all.

Even if she shouldn’t. Especially then.

When she told him to sit and he listened, the shift in the room was so slight she nearly missed it. It did not feel like command obeyed. It felt like something stranger, and somehow more intimate: two people deciding, without a formal agreement, to steal a pocket of peace from the wreckage and sit in it together while they could.

She liked that more than she ought to have.

He sat. Took the toast. Ignored the papers. Looked at her instead of the evidence.

Then came the line about control—that this pause, this table, this food, this stretch of time before the next ruin, was the only real control they had tonight.

Which only made the idea of delaying all the horrors waiting in those documents more appealing.

Vivienne took another bite, slower this time, and watched him over the table with a steadiness that had become more honest than guarded. The room held them differently now. The lamp. The whiskey. The plate between them. His apartment rising quietly around the edges of the moment like it had no opinion on what either of them should do next.

She swallowed, set the fork down, and let her fingers close around her glass.

Then she looked at him directly.

There was no point in performing around the thing anymore.

“If I decide,” she said, each word placed with care, “that I would like a little more of this before we reopen my father’s crimes—”

Her gaze did not leave his.

“—I assume you are still aligned with that preference.”

A tiny pause.

Because if we’re going to sit here pretending we aren’t both thinking about kissing each other every time the room gets quiet, she thought, then we deserve the distraction we’re creating for ourselves.

What she said instead was cleaner.

“It occurs to me,” she continued, “that we may be wasting a great deal of concentration on restraint that no longer seems especially necessary.”

The line came out very calm.

Too calm, perhaps, for what it was.

But she was Vivienne. Calm was how she delivered the most dangerous things.

She lifted the glass and took a small sip, then set it back down with quiet care.

“I’m trying to determine whether it would be strategically wiser to stop fighting that,” she said, “or whether you intend to make me do all the elegant admitting alone.”

There.

Not coy. Not soft. Not asking for permission either.

Just direct in the way she had become with him tonight—sharp enough to survive itself, open enough not to be mistaken.

The sleeve of his shirt had slipped over her hand again. She made no move to fix it.

“And before you answer badly,” she added, the faintest trace of dry light returning to her mouth, “understand that I am already being unusually generous with both honesty and interpretation.”

Then she went still and let him look at her.

No ballroom. No audience. No museum corridor to interrupt them. No East House wall listening for a scandal it could repurpose.

Just this room. This table. This pause.

And Vivienne Blackwell, no longer particularly interested in pretending she did not know exactly what she wanted.

Roman didn’t answer immediately.

Not because he didn’t understand what she was asking.

Because he did.

Completely.

He watched her instead—the way she held herself still after saying it, like she’d set something precise and volatile on the table between them and trusted it not to detonate unless mishandled. The sleeve slipping over her hand again. The glass resting where she’d placed it with that same careful control she applied to everything else. The fact that she hadn’t looked away.

She wasn’t guessing.

She was choosing.

That mattered.

He set his glass down, slower than necessary, not breaking eye contact with her.

“If you decide you want more of this—” he said, picking up her words exactly where she’d left them, voice low and even “—then I’m not going to pretend I’m conflicted about it.”

A beat.

“I’m aligned.”

No hesitation. No hedging.

Just the truth.

At her point about restraint, something in his expression shifted—subtle, but there. Not surprise. Recognition. Like she’d finally said something he’d been watching her circle for the last hour.

“You’re right,” he said. “It’s not necessary.”

Not anymore.

Not here.

Her next line—about elegance, about whether he intended to make her carry that alone—pulled the faintest edge of something sharper into his gaze. Not defensive. Not amused.

Intent.

“I’m not interested in watching you do anything alone if I can help it.”

It wasn’t flirtation.

It landed closer to promise than that.

Then she warned him not to answer badly.

That got a flicker—quick, dry—at the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I got that impression.”

His eyes moved over her then—not rushed, not careless, just… thorough. Taking in the shift in her posture, the loosened edges, the fact that she was still composed but no longer armored in the same way.

When he stepped closer, it wasn’t abrupt.

It was inevitable.

He closed the space between the table and the couch in a few unhurried strides, stopping just within reach—not crowding her, not assuming, just placing himself where the next move belonged to both of them.

“Here’s the part you’re overthinking,” he said, voice dropping slightly, not softer—just closer.

“You don’t have to make it elegant.”

A pause.

“You already said it.”

His hand came up—not to grab, not to pull—just enough to catch the edge of that oversized sleeve where it had fallen over her fingers again. He pushed it back, slow, deliberate, exposing her hand without breaking the line between them.

“You want it,” he said.

Not a question.

“And so do I.”

That was it.

No performance. No escalation dressed up as something else.

Just clean acknowledgment.

He let his hand settle briefly at her wrist—not holding, not restraining, just there—warm, grounding, giving her the smallest point of contact to either accept or remove.

“I’m not gonna make you carry that alone either.”

A beat.

Then, finally—just enough edge back to keep it from becoming too still, too serious:

“And for the record,” he added, voice quieter now, “you’re not being generous.”

His gaze held hers.

“You’re being honest.”

And that—more than anything—was what made him lean in the last inch.

Slow enough to stop.

Close enough that the decision was hers to finish.

Or not.

That was the line that did it.

Not the agreement. Not the acknowledgment that he wanted it too. Not even the quiet certainty of him crossing the room like the answer had been waiting there all along.

It was the part about not being interested in watching her do anything alone if he could help it.

That hit deepest.

Because it would have been much easier—cleaner, safer, more in keeping with everything she had ever been taught—if he sounded polished when he said things like that. If there were some detectable vanity in it. Some little performance she could isolate and dismiss as charm, ambition, strategy, appetite.

Instead it came from him with an infuriating kind of sincerity.

And Vivienne knew sincerity when she saw it, perhaps because she had spent her whole life surrounded by the opposite.

Charles lied elegantly. Her world lied institutionally. Old money lied with posture, timing, flowers, trust documents, schools, christenings, and softened voices over dinner.

Roman did not sound like any of that.

Which either made him a remarkably gifted liar—

or something much more dangerous.

Her eyes stayed on his as he came closer.

Not because she was trying to intimidate him. Because she wanted to see whether anything in his face changed as the distance narrowed and the air between them altered into something that could no longer plausibly be called accidental.

Nothing did.

Or rather, things did—but only in the ways that mattered. The intention in him sharpened. The steadiness stayed. The ridiculous certainty of him became more physical the nearer he got, and she hated how much that certainty settled something in her rather than alarming it.

When he told her she was overthinking the elegance of it, the corner of her mouth shifted.

“Possibly,” she said quietly. “Though our kisses have been getting progressively less elegant, so at this point I’m forced to conclude that you are a corrosive influence.”

A tiny pause.

“It would be consistent with the pattern.”

And overthinking, she thought, was how one noticed patterns before they became traps.

That had always been the defense. The gift. The problem.

His hand came up then, not for her face, not for her throat, not with the kind of careless confidence men in her world often mistook for seduction. Just her sleeve. The loose fabric of his shirt pushed back from her fingers with slow, deliberate care.

Her eyes dropped to watch that. Only that.

The cotton shifting up her forearm. His hand at her wrist afterward, warm and light and not trying to own the contact. The brief, absurd intimacy of a man exposing her hand as if that were the real beginning of something.

Then her gaze came back to his face.

He was closer now. Close enough that she could see the shift in his breathing, the shape of his mouth before it moved, the line of his jaw under the lamplight. When he said she was not being generous—only honest—some distant, better-trained part of her considered correcting him. Where she came from, honesty was generosity. It was luxury. It was risk. It was the thing one gave only when one had chosen, very deliberately, not to weaponize silence instead.

But he was already leaning in.

And she had no interest in wasting the moment on semantics.

So she reached for him.

Not tentatively. Not like a woman asking permission she had already been given.

Her hand caught in the front of his shirt and tightened, and she pulled him the rest of the way to her with a decisiveness that felt cleaner than any of the restraint they had both been pretending to value for the last hour.

The kiss landed without witness. Without Charles. Without a bar mirror or a museum corridor or a paid set of eyes somewhere nearby waiting to misunderstand it on purpose.

Not a kiss to tell a story. Not one used as misdirection. Not sidewalk heat cut with irritation and a slap because Manhattan had made them both too visible. Not the chosen, clever annex kiss that had still carried the pressure of interruption inside it.

This one belonged only to the room they had made.

Small apartment. Warm lamp. Food on the table. Her life in stolen papers ten feet away. His shirt in her fist. No audience. No excuse.

Vivienne kissed him like she was finished pretending choice was less dangerous than circumstance.

There was still precision in her, still that Blackwell instinct to feel every inch of the moment as it unfolded—the way his mouth met hers without hesitation, the exact point where his hand at her wrist altered from grounding to heat, the way her own breath shifted as if something in her had been waiting, quietly and with terrible patience, for a kiss that was not doing double duty for anyone else.

She felt the pattern of the others in the background only because this one was so entirely different.

This was not performance. Not retaliation. Not usefulness disguised as appetite.

This was want, stripped of all its decorative lies.

And because she was still herself even here, even now, even with his shirt gathered in her hand and his mouth finally where she had been thinking about it far too often, some cool, private part of her registered the fact that yes—this, too, would likely be his fault somehow.

That thought nearly made her smile against him.

Instead she kissed him harder.

Not to prove anything. Not to punish him. Not even to make up for the others.

Simply because she wanted to.

And for the first time all night, that felt like reason enough.

Roman didn’t brace for it.

He didn’t have time to.

One second she was watching him—measured, deliberate, deciding—and the next her hand was in his shirt, grip firm, pulling him forward with a kind of clarity he recognized instantly.

No hesitation.

No second-guessing.

Just decision.

And he met her there just as cleanly.

No surprise breaking the line. No pause to reorient. His hand shifted from her wrist as she pulled him in, sliding upward—not possessive, not restraining—just enough to anchor her properly as the distance disappeared.

The kiss landed hard.

Not uncontrolled—she wasn’t built that way—but without the careful calibration she’d used everywhere else tonight. There was still precision in her, yes, but it wasn’t being used to hold anything back. It was being used to choose every inch of it.

That was the difference.

And Roman felt it immediately.

He responded in kind—not overwhelming her, not trying to take the moment out of her hands—but matching the force she brought into it. His free hand found her at the side, steadying, grounding, fingers pressing lightly into the fabric at her waist where his shirt hung loose on her frame.

She pulled. He followed.

Simple.

Direct.

The kind of alignment that didn’t need to be negotiated.

There was no audience here. No interruption waiting at the edge of it. No strategic reason for the contact beyond the fact that both of them had stopped pretending it wasn’t inevitable.

And because of that, he didn’t rush it.

He let it build instead.

Let the shift in her breathing register. Let the way she held him—decisive, unapologetic—set the pace. Let the tension from the entire night burn off into something sharper, cleaner, focused entirely in the space between them instead of the chaos they’d left behind.

At one point, her grip tightened just slightly at his shirt, and something in him answered it without thought—his hand at her side pressing a fraction firmer, pulling her just close enough to remove the last of the space she hadn’t already taken.

Not taking control.

Just closing the gap she’d already decided didn’t belong there.

When she pushed harder into it, he met her with equal intent, no hesitation, no softening into something polite. There was nothing polite about this anymore.

And still—still—he didn’t let it turn into something careless.

Because even here, even like this, he was paying attention.

To her.

To the fact that this wasn’t just heat—it was choice layered over everything they’d just survived.

When the kiss finally broke, it wasn’t abrupt.

It slowed.

Not fully separating at first—just enough space for breath to return, for the air between them to exist again without breaking the connection entirely.

His forehead hovered close to hers for a second, his hand still at her side, steady, present.

Then his eyes lifted to hers.

There was no smugness there.

No victory.

Just that same maddening steadiness she’d been tracking all night—now sharpened by something warmer, more dangerous.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

Not a question. Not even really a statement.

Just acknowledgment.

Then, after a beat—voice low, almost rougher than before but still controlled:

“Definitely not wasting time.”

A faint shift at the corner of his mouth—there and gone before it could become something she could dismantle.

His hand eased slightly at her side, not dropping away, just loosening enough to give her space again without fully stepping back.

“Five minutes,” he added, glancing briefly toward the table where the papers waited.

Then back to her.

“We’ve still got some left.”