Chapter 32: He is not a good person

His hand closed around hers slowly, deliberately, and he pulled her toward him with the same gentleness he used for everything, until the blade was pressed flat against his chest and she could feel his heartbeat through the handle.

"Come on then." Quiet. His eyes on hers. "Right here. Right now." A beat. "Unless you can’t."

Her hand shook.

She could feel it, the tremor moving through her fingers, through the handle, traveling the length of the blade like a confession she hadn’t meant to make. His heartbeat against her palm. Steady. Unhurried. The heartbeat of a man who was not afraid.

The knife dropped.

It hit the floor, and she stepped back, and her hand was empty, and her chest was full of something she had no name for and absolutely no room for, and she pressed both palms flat against her thighs and tried to find the architecture of herself that had been there this morning.

Why, she thought. Why couldn’t I...

Two answers came at once.

The first, because you felt something and you hate yourself for it.

The second, quieter, more honest, because you are not like them. You are not a killer. You never were. That is not weakness. That is the only thing in this house that is entirely, completely yours.

The second answer made more sense.

She held onto it.

Viktor picked the knife up from the floor. Set it back on the table. Then he crossed to her slowly, giving her time to move if she wanted to, and touched her arm. Light. The burned arm. A check, not a claim.

"The dress is ready for you." His voice had returned to its even, unhurried register. Nothing in it that referenced what had just happened. "Whether you come to the gala tonight..." he stepped back, giving her space, all the space she’d asked for earlier, " is up to you."

He walked away.

Down the corridor. Around the corner. Gone.

Sienna stood in the hall alone.

Her hand was still shaking slightly. She looked at it. Made a fist. Opened it.

The heartbeat, she thought, against her will. Against every available wall she’d built. I felt his heartbeat, and the world went quiet.

She pressed her eyes closed.

Stop it.

You are Sienna Vale. You are not a killer, and you are not a fool, and you are not going to stand in this hallway having feelings about a man who...

She opened her eyes. Looked at the table where the knife sat. Then in the corridor where he’d gone.

Then at the ceiling, which had done nothing wrong and didn’t deserve what she was about to say to it.

Fine, she told herself, gathering the remnants of her composure from the various corners of the hall where they’d scattered. Fine. You felt his heartbeat. So what. Hearts beat. It’s biology. It means nothing.

She walked toward the stairs. Absolutely nothing. The dress was waiting in the bedroom.

Laid out with the kind of precision that felt almost deliberate, almost like a dare. The fabric caught the afternoon light and threw it back in soft golds and black, shameless and beautiful, as if it had no idea what it meant. As if it didn’t know everything.

Sienna stood in the doorway for a long time.

She didn’t move toward it. She didn’t move away from it either. She just looked at it the way you look at something that doesn’t belong to you.

Eventually, she folded herself into the corner of the room, the small window seat that barely fit one person, and pulled her knees up to her chest. Outside, the city moved on without her.

She needed music. Not for any particular reason. Just to fill the silence before the silence filled her. She opened Spotify and hit shuffle without looking.

Of course. Of course, it was a love song.

Soft piano. A woman’s voice is like warm honey. Something about staying, something about please. Sienna almost laughed. Almost. Instead, she pressed her forehead against the cold glass of the window and let the last forty-eight hours unspool in front of her like a film she hadn’t agreed to be in.

There was a moment in the hallway. The way the room had been too loud and then, somehow, too quiet when he walked in.

There was the argument, his jaw tight, his eyes saying something his mouth refused to say.

And then there was the kiss. The kiss.

Her fingers touched her lips before she even realised what she was doing. She dropped her hand fast, as the memory had burned her.

She still didn’t know what to do with it. Whether she hated it. Whether she was supposed to hate it. Part of her wanted to scrub it away, and part of her, the quiet, traitorous part that lived somewhere behind her ribs, had replayed it maybe forty times since it happened.

Okay. Okay. He’s handsome. Fine. That’s just a fact, like gravity or taxes. That doesn’t mean anything. She watched a pigeon land on the windowsill and stare at her with zero sympathy.

And yes, he isn’t Simon. He is not Simon in any universe, in any timeline, in any version of reality. He is a hundred times, a thousand times less of a disaster than Simon ever was.

Her brain, helpful as always, tried to arrange this into something logical. Something that made sense. A little spreadsheet of reasons. Pros. Cons. Historical data.

She told her brain to shut up.

Sienna. The voice in her head sounded like her best friend Aria, all sharp edges and love. Stop. Just stop. Your life is already crazy, and this? This is a different category of crazy. He doesn’t see you. He sees a piece on a board. You are smarter than this. You have always been smarter than this.

She pressed her palms flat against her thighs. Right. Right.

He was not a good person. She knew this. She had the evidence. She had seen who he was when the mask slipped, when the charm ran out, when it was just him and a room and the truth of what he wanted.

She knew.

"He is not a good person," she said out loud, to the room, to the dress, to the pigeon who had already flown away. "I need to get out of here."

She stood up. Her legs were steadier than she expected. Good. That was good. She would leave the dress exactly where it was, beautiful and untouched, and she would walk out that door, and she would not look back because she was Sienna Vale and she did not do this. She did not.

She crossed the room. She reached for her phone. And then the door opened.