Mira tilted her head to look at him. He hadn’t said the word yet. For some reason, there was not one part of him that wanted to say it aloud.
"Earlier, when I walked into your room, I saw your eyes." She cut in. "This thing you said takes over your consciousness, does it have any permanent side effects? I mean, one you’ve seen from other members of your family."
Nico raised an eyebrow at ’family’.
"What are you talking about—"
"I know you’re awakened, Nico." She cut in again, louder this time. "I just need to know if that darkness affects your view to us too."
"Mira..."
"Sorry. Stupid, rhetorical question. I mean, I know my sisters and I are practically bounded to the Ashford family by marriage. But we really don’t have to live together if it would be dangerous for us."
"Mira, listen—"
"You don’t have to worry about where we would go. I have some savings left, I could get all three of us a small apartment in town and—"
"Enough!"
The word tore out of Nico before he could stop it, sharper than he meant, loud enough to shake the quiet between them. Mira flinched. Her eyes welled up instantly and widened with something close to fear.
’Why did I even do that?’
Regret rushed through him like cold water. He had wanted to shield her from the truth, not wound her with his own voice. The damage was already sitting there, plain on her face, and there was no taking it back now.
"Mira, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to—"
"Get out."
She said it coldly, her eyes looking everywhere else except at him.
Those two words landed heavier than they should have. He had spoken them to her himself that same morning, and now they came flying straight back at his chest. Hearing them from her mouth hurt worse.
Nico let out a slow breath and didn’t argue further. Whatever pride he had left told him not to beg her to take it back, not when she had already decided to throw his own words at him.
He pushed himself up and crossed the room toward the door. Just as his hand reached for the handle, he glanced back and saw Mira turn away, curling herself into a ball on the bed.
He sighed once more, quietly, and pulled the door shut behind him.
***
Later that day, Nico was in the training room with Lucas.
Fists cut through the air in sharp, controlled arcs, one swinging past Nico’s face close enough to stir his hair. His own punches answered just as fast, wild and aggressive, but every single one of them sailed past Lucas without so much as grazing him.
Nico’s head wasn’t in it, not even a little. He had asked Lucas to spar with him because out of everyone on his staff, Lucas was simply the best fighter around.
Part of him hoped for a punch hard enough to knock the memory of Mira’s face clean out of his skull. The rest of him just wanted somewhere to dump the frustration boiling under his skin.
He was managing the second option just fine. The problem was that every punch met nothing but empty air, which only fed the frustration he was trying to burn off in the first place.
Lucas wasn’t even trying, not really. He slipped every punch like it cost him nothing, almost without thinking about it. To him, a real fight came down to calculation, to reading the shape of a person’s movements before they made them.
Master both of those things, and the rest was simple. One clean shot, placed right, was all it ever took to end a fight.
But he hadn’t thrown that shot yet. Something in him must have sensed that Nico wasn’t really fighting, not with any real intent behind it, just raw aggression with nowhere else to go.
Lucas ducked another swing and shot him a small, puzzled frown.
"Is it safe to assume this training is just a catharsis for you?"
Nico didn’t answer. He lunged instead, reaching for Lucas’s torso, but Lucas parried the attempt and sidestepped clean out of range before it could land.
"Makes sense." Lucas continued. "But you could’ve called someone who you can actually hit. Like Emmet. He’s fat. He literally carries the entire mansion’s space."
Emmet, the mansion’s gardener, weighed somewhere around a hundred and fifty kilos, which made Lucas’s suggestion land with an uncomfortable amount of sense.
For Nico, though, Emmet wasn’t an option at all. Calling him in for this would likely end with the man dead, given how far his corruption leaned toward the darker side of himself.
If there was one person he trusted not to die on him mid-fight, it was Lucas. He had already proven that once before. He was also the only one fast enough to keep Nico’s corruption from ever tasting real excitement.
"Just shut up and fight me."
Nico grunted the words out and charged again, throwing a cross that Lucas slipped without effort. He followed up with a kick, clumsy but earnest, considering he had never once tried that particular move before.
Lucas caught his leg long before it came anywhere near landing. That seemed to be the moment his patience ran thin, because he shoved the leg aside and drove an elbow straight into Nico’s nose.
Nico hit the floor hard, landing flat on his backside.
"Alright, I’m just gonna go ahead and ask this." Lucas started, removing his gloves. "What is going on with you, boss?"
Lucas knew Nico the way a man knows a test he has sat a hundred times over. The Nico he knew never fought with his feet, and he certainly never dropped his guard carelessly enough to eat a hit like that.
Their usual sparring matches were brutal, evenly matched enough that neither of them could claim a clear win most of the time. But right now, Nico was fighting like someone who had never thrown a punch in his life.
"I’m fine, Lucas."
Nico wiped a line of blood off his nose as he said it. Strangely, his head felt clearer already. The aggression that had been clawing at him moments ago had simply vanished, and the urge to put his fist through a wall went with it.
He looked up to find Lucas still watching him with that same puzzled, questioning look.
"What? I said I’m fine."
"Alright then, you convinced me."
Lucas stepped closer and offered a hand, pulling Nico back up onto his feet.
"I don’t know what you’re not telling me, boss. But whatever it is, you have to take care of it." Lucas started. "Especially now that everyone is counting on you more than ever."
Nico opened his mouth to answer, but a short burst of static cut him off, followed a beat later by a man’s voice.
"Blue Sloth, can I get a response from Blue Sloth. Over."
Lucas crossed to the locker and pulled his coms phone off the shelf.
"Blue Sloth responding. What’s the situation?"
"There is a woman outside the mansion’s perimeters, asking to see the boss. Red hair, petite. Won’t say her name."
"Negative." Lucas replied. "The red eagle has no meeting appointment fixed today. Over."
"Okay, copy that. Over."
Nico found himself briefly wondering why his codename was red eagle of all things. That thought aside, the description of the woman outside tugged at something oddly familiar.
"Wait." He stopped Lucas before he could drop the coms phone. "Let her in."
"You sure about this, boss?"
Nico nodded. He already had a feeling about who was standing outside. If she was really back, she would have come straight for him, and he needed to see it for himself to be sure.
Lucas pressed the button down again and spoke into the receiver.
"On second thought, do not send her away. The red eagle approves. Invite her in."
"Alright. Copy that."
Nico went up to his room and changed into something more formal, buttoning his shirt with hands that hadn’t quite steadied yet. Then he made his way down to the guest hall.
There, he found her seated, gazing at the mansion’s architecture with unmasked wonder. She was loudly admiring how pretty the marble on the walls looked, her voice carrying clean across the room.
Leanne Paulman.
His ex-girlfriend.