Ficorpio
Chapter 1
My call lit Adrian’s phone on the table between a bottle of twelve-year-old whiskey and a crystal tumbler he should not have been holding.
Through the smoked glass dividing The Foundry Club’s entrance from its private lounge, I watched his name flash across my screen while mine appeared on his.
ELENA.
He looked at it.
Then he looked away.
The phone continued to vibrate against the black marble, an insect trapped beneath a glass. Blake Weston noticed first. He leaned across the low table, grinning as if my concern had arrived on cue for his entertainment.
“Romeo,” he called over the bass, “your parole officer is checking in.”
Laughter moved through the lounge.
Adrian sat in the center of it, one arm stretched along the back of the leather banquette, his dark jacket open and his tie loosened by exactly enough to suggest carelessness without ever losing control. He had always known how to make disorder look expensive.
The whiskey in his hand caught the amber light.
My stomach tightened.
He had eaten half a piece of toast that morning. At lunch, he had sent me a photograph of an espresso beside a stack of contracts. When I asked if he had taken the medication for his chronic gastritis, he had replied with a thumbs-up that meant either yes or stop asking.
One more drink might do nothing.
Or it might mean another night in urgent care, Adrian pale beneath fluorescent lights while a doctor explained, again, that blood in his vomit was not a minor inconvenience.
I ended the call before it went to voicemail.
Inside the lounge, Blake raised Adrian’s phone and checked the darkened screen. “She gave up fast.”
“Did she?” Miles Prescott asked. His suit looked untouched by the humid Port Haven night, every line sharp enough to cut. “That would be a first.”
Someone farther down the banquette laughed into his glass.
Julian Cross did not. He rolled the stem of his wineglass between long fingers, his watch flashing when the light swept past. His expression held the mild, polished amusement of a man watching a predictable market correction.
“She’s probably already on her way,” he said.
I stopped with my hand on the inner door.
Julian’s gaze moved toward the smoked glass. For one uneasy second, I wondered whether he could see me. Then he looked back at Adrian.
Blake slapped the phone down. “Even better. Come on, Adrian. Show us you’re still allowed to order your own drinks.”
“Don’t be pathetic,” Adrian said.
The words were quiet, but the men nearest him heard. Their smiles widened because his irritation was part of the show.
“Pathetic?” Blake pressed a hand to his chest. “I’m not the one whose girlfriend sets a drink limit.”
Chapter 2
“She doesn’t set anything.”
“Then prove it.”
A server appeared beside the table with the alert stillness of someone trained to recognize money before trouble. Adrian’s glass was not empty. He lifted it anyway, swallowed what remained, and held it out.
“Another.”
My second call began vibrating across the table.
This time Adrian did not look at my name.
He watched the server pour.
I opened the door.
The Foundry Club swallowed the sound behind me and replaced it with heat, perfume, and bass strong enough to pulse through my ribs. The old waterfront foundry had been converted into a monument to Port Haven wealth: exposed iron beams, blackened brick, copper light, and private alcoves designed to let powerful people feel hidden while making certain everyone knew they were there.
Conversations changed as I crossed the room. Not stopped. Changed. Faces turned and turned back. A woman in silver glanced from me to Adrian’s table and smiled into her cocktail.
I had arrived in a navy work dress and low heels, carrying my laptop bag because I had come straight from Meridian. Everyone else looked prepared for midnight photographs. I looked prepared to correct a contractor’s measurements.
Blake saw me and spread his arms.
“There she is.”
Adrian’s friends shifted, making room without offering me a seat. Julian watched me with an attention that felt more invasive than staring.
Adrian took a slow drink.
I stopped beside him. Up close, I could see the tension at the corner of his mouth. He was pleased I had come. He would never admit it here, but I knew him well enough to recognize the slight easing in his shoulders.
That knowledge used to feel intimate.
Tonight, it felt like evidence against me.
“Adrian,” I said. “Can we speak privately?”
His gaze remained on his glass. “You’re already here.”
“I noticed.”
A few of the men laughed. Not because it was funny, but because the response gave them permission.
I kept my voice even. “Two minutes.”
Blake shifted his knees aside with exaggerated courtesy. “Don’t mind us.”
“I do,” I said.
That earned a sharper laugh. Blake looked delighted rather than insulted.
Adrian finally met my eyes. His were cool, dark, and far too clear for me to pretend he did not understand what was happening.
“Say what you came to say, Elena.”
There it was—the first move in the breakup test.
Make privacy sound unreasonable. Make concern look like a demand. Refuse the small kindness until I either surrendered or became emotional enough to justify his contempt.
My body knew the pattern before my mind named it. My shoulders drew inward. My tongue pressed against the back of my teeth, holding down every sentence that would make things worse.
Chapter 3
I leaned closer so I would not have to raise my voice over the music. Adrian caught the clean citrus scent of my perfume; I knew because his eyes flicked, briefly, to the place below my ear where he used to rest his mouth in the quiet minutes before sleep.
The pause between us was charged with years of private familiarity.
Then he leaned away.
He made the refusal visible.
“You haven’t eaten,” I said. “You’ve been drinking whiskey for at least an hour, and your stomach was already hurting this morning.”
“I’m fine.”
“You said that last time.”
“Last time?” Blake echoed. “There are medical records now?”
I ignored him. “Come home with me. Or stop drinking and eat something. I don’t care which, but please don’t keep doing this.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened at the word please.
Miles examined the ice in his glass. “She doesn’t care which, provided she selects the options.”
“I asked him a factual question,” I said without looking at Miles.
“No,” Adrian said. “You came here to supervise me.”
A flush climbed my throat. “I called because you have chronic gastritis.”
“And when I didn’t answer, you decided to track me down.”
“You told me where you were.”
“Earlier.”
“Yes. Locations don’t become classified after nine.”
Julian lowered his glass to hide the edge of a smile.
Blake did not bother. “Damn, Adrian. She brought citations.”
The group laughed again.
Adrian’s expression hardened, not at them but at me. I had made him look less than fully in control. It did not matter that I had tried to speak privately. It did not matter that Blake had turned every sentence into a performance. In Adrian’s world, the person asking for care created the embarrassment, never the people enjoying her discomfort.
He set down his tumbler with careful precision.
“You’ve made your point.”
“I’m not trying to make a point.”
“That’s the problem, Elena. You never think you are.”
The sentence landed with the efficiency of a familiar blade.
I searched his face for the man who once sat on the concrete floor of our Ash Street basement studio and fed me cold noodles from the carton because we owned one chair between us. The man who had fallen asleep with his head in my lap while I worked. The man who, during his first severe attack, had clutched my wrist in the emergency room and whispered that he hated needing anyone.
He was still there. That was what made leaving a conversation like this so difficult.
He was still there, and he was choosing not to help me.
Blake tipped his glass toward me. “Let the man have a night out.”
“He’s had six,” I said.
“Counting, too.” Miles’s tone was dry. “Optics aren’t improving.”
“Whose optics?” I asked.
“Everyone’s.”
“Useful answer.”