His driver, Marcus, spotted him approaching and had the door open before he reached the car. Kaelen slid into the back seat, his hands shaking, his heart hammering against his ribs.

  "Office, sir?" Marcus asked, settling into the driver's seat.

  Kaelen nodded, not trusting his voice. His hands were still shaking where they rested on his thighs, fingers trembling against the fine wool of his trousers. He stared out the window at the café's facade, at the warm light spilling onto the sidewalk, at the ordinary people going about their ordinary lives completely unaware that his entire reality had just cracked open.

  The engine hummed to life. Marcus began to pull away from the curb.

  "No," Kaelen heard himself say. The word came out rough, unfamiliar to his own ears. "Not the office. Take me home."

  Marcus glanced at him in the rearview mirror, a flicker of something—concern? curiosity? —crossing his otherwise impassive features. But he was a professional.

  "Home it is, sir."

  The car pulled away from the curb, merging into evening traffic, and only then did he let himself feel it. His mind—his perfectly ordered, logical, controlled mind—was a screaming chaos of denial and wonder and fear, each thought colliding with the next until nothing made sense anymore.

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  The woman from the coffee shop—the one who had stared at him like he was the answer to a question she'd been asking forever—had infiltrated his thoughts like a virus, corrupting every logical process with her presence. He saw her face when he closed his eyes. He heard her voice in the spaces between thoughts. He felt her gaze on his skin even when he was alone in his penthouse, fifty floors above the city.

  One night, feeling restless due to work, he decided to go for a walk. He needed air, distance, something to break the endless loop of her image playing behind his eyes. He stepped out of the Crestmore Towers into the cool night air, and immediately felt it—that strange prickling at the back of his neck, the unmistakable sensation of being watched.

  He glanced across the street, into the shadows pooled beneath a neighboring building's awning. A silhouette. Small, feminine, half-hidden in the dark. He couldn't see her face, couldn't make out any details, but he knew. It was her. The same pull he'd felt in the coffee shop, the same gravitational tug toward something he couldn't explain.

  He didn't confront her. Didn't cross the street. He simply turned and began walking toward the park, as if he hadn't noticed. He had no idea why he let her follow him—some instinct, some deeper knowing that this was inevitable, that sooner or later he needed answers.

  For a week, it became their strange ritual. He'd walk in the evenings, and she'd be there, always at a distance, always in the shadows. He pretended not to notice. She pretended to hide. And somewhere in the back of his mind, he waited for the moment when he'd finally have the courage to turn around and demand the truth.