Page 2 of The Final Contract

One brown eye.

One ice-blue.

A gaze that sees straight through me.

Sometimes he vanishes for months, as if he never existed at all. Then—without warning—he reappears. A rose on my doorstep. A shadow where no shadow should be. Never violent. Never close enough to touch. Just near enough to remind me that he can.

When it first began, we tried to catch him. The police. Private investigators. Lucian. But he slipped away, a phantom in his own right. Untouchable. Unseen.

The waltz carries me, steps ingrained into muscle memory, but my heartbeat is uneven. The Maestro spins me gracefully, and my skirts flare like pale smoke across the floor. I use the turn to scan the crowd, searching past jeweled masks and champagne smiles, desperate to pin down that rose.

Nothing. Only strangers, glittering and false.

Perhaps I imagined it.

The pressure in my chest tightens, panic clawing its way up—until my gaze lifts and I find him.

Not my phantom. My shadow.

Killian stands on the second-story balcony, half in shadow himself.

No mask.

He’d never hide.

His tuxedo cuts a severe line against the golden light, and his presence alone swallows the space around him. He’s already seen the shift in me, already read the panic I thought I hid. There’s something relentless in the way he watches—steady, unblinking, as though I’m the only movement in the room worth tracking.

Even from here, I feel the coiled readiness in him. A predator on the edge of pouncing. One signal from me, and he’ll bring this ballroom to its knees.

And relief loosens something inside me at that thought.

Five years. That’s how long the shadows have followed me—sometimes loud, sometimes silent, always there. Long enough that I’ve learned to live with it, to tuck it away like a background hum. Everyone else moved on when he went quiet, and I let them. Easier to pretend it was nothing than risk drawing blood by admitting it still lingered.

But Killian… he doesn’t know. Not the way it is now. If I told him, he’d never rest, never stop until he flushed the bastard out of whatever hole he’s crawled back into. That’s who he is. Unyielding. Consuming. And maybe that terrifies me more than the stalker ever did.

I give the smallest nod. A quiet command in our language of glances we’ve perfected.No. It’s fine. Stay.

His posture doesn’t change, but he stays rooted. Watching. Waiting.

The final measures of the waltz crash through the air, sweeping me back into the movement. I let the music carry me, finishing each step with practiced elegance, though my pulse still thunders louder than the applause.

Maestro Levant offers his arm again, guiding me up the grand staircase. We ascend together, my skirts heavy against each marble step, until the spotlight finds us at the far left. Behind us, tall, gilded doors wait to open, promising the night sky and fireworks.

The Maestro clears his throat, his voice swelling into the microphone with the pomp and grandeur of the announcement. Forty years of history. One final farewell. His words are drowned in applause, but my focus isn’t on him.

It’s on them.

Every mask. Every tuxedo. Every gleaming boutonniere.

And there—movement where everything else is still.

A man in the middle of the crowd, drifting toward the right. His mask is gold, molded into the half face of a phantom.

My breath catches.

My eyes lift instantly to the balcony. To Killian.

He never stopped watching, steel-gray eyes locked on me. He saw the shift in my posture. Reads me like no one else can. His hand brushes to his ear, activating the earpiece, murmuring something low to our driver stationed nearby.