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“Chiara! You’re on time for once.”

I turn to see the shift manager—Mike or Mark or something—eyeing me with surprise. I smile and nod, not trusting myself to speak. Chiara would flirt. I just fake polite.

All I need to do is get through this shift without anyone realizing I’m not her. She’s already been fired too many times for violating her contract.

“Your section’s filling up. Get out there,” he says, already focused on the espresso machine.

I tie the apron around my waist and step onto the café floor. The noise hits me first—overlapping conversations, the hiss of steam, dishes clattering in the background. I scan the room, trying to figure out which tables belong to Chiara’s section.

“Chiara!”

The annoyed voice slices through the air. “Chiara!”

It takes me a second to realize I’m supposed to respond to that name. I turn toward the sound and see the manager standing by the counter, gesturing impatiently to the far corner of the café.

“Your section. Table six needs to order, and eight wants their check,” he says, loud enough that a few customers glance over. Heat creeps up my neck.

“On it,” I mumble, grabbing an order pad and pen.

I weave through the tables, acutely aware of eyes following me. This is why I hate covering for Chiara—I hate being noticed. I much prefer my night shift at the drugstore or afternoons at the bookstore, where I can disappear between shelves and no one cares if I go silent for hours.

Coffee. Vanilla. Clinking dishes. Voices.

I should be focused. But I’m not.

Chiara’s messes keep piling up, and I can’t keep bailing her out.

My tray wobbles in my hand.

Focus, Aria. Just get through the shift.

I draw a breath, steady the tray, and step into the flow of the café, weaving between tables like muscle memory is doing the work my mind can’t.

The weight of it presses on my chest as I balance the tray in one hand.

Table six is a group of college girls sharing a giant slice of chocolate cake. I take their drink orders without incident.

Table eight is an elderly couple who smile warmly and hold hands across the table, quietly chatting like it’s their first date.

Andhim.

He had been there for a while, sitting in the back corner—a man who clearly doesn’t belong in a place like Brew Haven. Everything about him screams money and power, from his tailored charcoal suit to his perfectly styled dark hair. He’s handsome. Devastatingly so. The kind of face you expect to see in a magazine, not tucked into the corner of a small café. My heart starts to race the longer I look at him.

His hands rest on either side of a plain black coffee, long fingers utterly still.

But it’s the glimpse of ink that freezes me. Just below the cuff of his shirt, curling over the bone of his wrist, is a tattoo—dark, intricate, deliberate.

Not a modern design. Something older. Traditional.

The kind of tattoo you earn, not choose.

And it’s that stillness that draws me in. He doesn’t fidget with his phone or glance around the room like most customers. He just watches—with the sharp, deliberate focus of someone who already knows more about everyone here than they know about themselves.

I wasn’t sure why I noticed him. Maybe because he wastoocontrolled. His presencecommandedattention, yet no one seemed to notice him.

No one but me.

And then he looked up.