NICK

The hospital always smelled of the same thing: expensive soap and a faint, sharp edge of chemicals.

It was mid-afternoon, and I was in the small, quiet window between my last patient and my next surgery. Most surgeons used this time to finish charts or drink bad coffee, but I preferred the silence.

My phone vibrated against the wood of the desk. I didn’t have to look at the screen to know who it was. The rhythm of the buzz was insistent.

Lila.

I picked up. Before I could even say a word, her voice spilled into the line. She sounded breathless, the way she always did when she was carrying a piece of gossip that had finally reached critical mass.

"Nick," she said, her voice a sharp whisper. "Nick, I found something. I’ve been digging for days, and you have no idea, this is not what I expected. Like—at all. I had to go through three different archives just to—"

"Lila—" I said. My voice was a flat line.

"No—listen! His name isn’t even Cyan. Well, it’s not his legal name. And his father, Nick... his father is—"

"Lila," I said again. This time, the tone worked. It was the one I used on residents when they started to ramble during a code. She stopped.

"What?" she asked, sounding slightly offended.

"I’m about to go into surgery," I said, checking the clock on the wall. "Where are you tonight?"

There was a brief silence as she adjusted. Lila was many things, but she was never slow.

She knew when the social performance ended and the business began.

"Wherever you want me to be," she replied, her voice dropping into something more seductive.

"I’ll text you the address," I said. "Eight o’clock. Don’t be late."

I hung up before she could agree. I pocketed the phone and picked up the chart for the next procedure.

My mind returned to the task at hand, which was the only thing I trusted completely to occupy my full attention.

The human body was predictable.

It followed rules. People, on the other hand, were a mess of variables I didn’t always have the patience to solve.

The rest of the day moved with the seamless efficiency I demanded of my life.

Two surgeries, back-to-back. Four consults.

A dozen junior residents presenting cases with varying degrees of competence.

Administrative meetings that filled the gaps in between.

I was aware of the exhaustion tugging at the edges of my vision, but I treated it like the weather.

It was there, but it wouldn’t stop me. It never did. That was a lesson I had learned a long time ago: fatigue was a choice.

In the small margins of the day, the moments spent scrubbing in or walking between wings, my thoughts drifted.

Not to my patients, but to the meeting that morning. I thought about Noah’s face. I thought about the specific way the blood had left his skin when I spoke.

The confirmation was in that color. I had been right about him and Cassian Wolfe.

Noah was predictable, after all.

And then there was Cyan.

His name isn’t even Cyan.

The thought waited in the back of my mind, a puzzle piece looking for its pair.

I chose a restaurant that sat on the edge of the district. It was casual by my standards, which meant the tables were spaced far apart and the music was low enough to be ignored.

It was private. It was the kind of place where two people could talk about things that shouldn’t be heard by anyone who mattered.

I arrived first. I don’t wait for people; people wait for me. Unless I choose to be there early, which is a different thing entirely. I took the table in the back corner, my back to the wall. An old habit.

Lila arrived eight minutes late.

For her, that was practically early. She didn’t make a scene, but Lila was never truly invisible.

She had chosen her outfit for this, something dark and expensive that made her look like someone with a secret.

Her hair was perfect. She was performing the role of a woman who thought this dinner was about her.

I watched her cross the room, assessing her the way I assessed a scan.

She looked good. Lila had understood from a very young age that appearance was armor, and she maintained hers with professional rigor.

But I also saw the brightness in her eyes. It was the look of a person who had a gift and couldn’t wait to open it.

She sat down and reached for my hand across the table. It was an intimate, practiced gesture.

She wanted the world, or at least the waiter, to think we were something more than we were.

I didn’t take her hand. I picked up the menu. "What did you find?" I asked.

No greeting. No small talk. I was itching to hear what she had found about Cyan.

Lila’s smile flickered for a second as she recalibrated. She pulled her hand back and smoothed her napkin. "Hello to you too, Nick."

I looked at her over the top of the menu. I waited.

She sighed, a dramatic little sound. "Fine. But I want a glass of wine first. The good stuff."

We didn’t speak until the wine arrived. Lila took a slow sip, leaning in until her elbows were on the table. She was a natural storyteller; she liked to build the tension until it was almost unbearable.

"His name isn’t Cyan," she began, repeating what she’d said on the phone. "Well, he uses it. But it’s not on his birth certificate. His legal name is Lucien. Lucien Devereaux. Schooled at St. John Private academy. Graduated college at age 20."

The name landed in the center of the table. Devereaux. It was a name that felt familiar, the way a distant bell sounds familiar before you realize it’s a warning.

Lila watched my face, looking for a reaction. She seemed satisfied by whatever she saw. "The Devereaux family," she prompted. "Does that mean anything to you?"

"No," I said. "Continue."

"His father," Lila said, dropping her voice. "Is the current Prime Minister of our neighbor to the east. The one who just signed that massive trade deal the president."

Oh.

The image of the man who had punched me in the jaw shifted. The pink hair, the rings, the total lack of hesitation, he was the son of a Prime Minister.

"But the Prime Minister is said to only have two daughters," I said, my mind flicking through the political profiles I’d read.

"Yes," Lila said, her smile widening. "The current wife has two daughters. Very ideal. Very photographed. That’s the image they sell to the public. But the first marriage? Almost nobody knows about it. It was never meant to be part of the brand. It was an arranged marriage between two old-money families before he even started his political career."

"And Lucien was born from that marriage," I concluded.

"Exactly," Lila said. "Which makes him the hidden first Chapter. The secret you don’t put in the official biography. The shameful reminder of a life the Prime Minister wanted to leave behind."

"What happened to the first wife?" I asked.

Lila’s expression changed slightly. She took another drink of her wine, her eyes dark.

"That’s where it gets interesting. She died a few years back. The cause was kept very quiet, the kind of quiet that requires a lot of money and a lot of motivation to maintain. But there are rumors, Nick. Rumors that she was mentally unstable for a long time. She was on heavy antidepressants, living in a private estate far away from the cameras."

I set the menu down. I was listening now. Fully.

"Around the same time she died," Lila continued, "Cyan—no—Lucien disappeared. He vanished off the radar completely. No social appearances, no mentions in the society papers. Nothing. For close to two years, he was just... gone."

"Disappeared," I repeated.

"Gone," Lila said. "And when he finally came back, there was no explanation. He was just here. With a different name. A different look. He even runs a boutique in Spain. And apparently, a very close, very protective relationship with Cassian Wolfe."

She paused, letting that sink in. "Oh. And one more thing. The Prime Minister’s current wife? The ’ideal’ one with the daughters?"

"What about her?"

Lila leaned in even closer, her eyes gleaming. "He was already with her. Before the first wife died. Considerably before."

The picture was assembling in my mind. A hidden son.

A mother who died in the shadows while her husband was already building a new, perfect life with another woman.

A son who vanished when his mother died and came back as a man with pink hair and a dangerous edge, attached to a man like Cassian Wolfe.

I looked at Lila. "What degree does he have?"

She looked surprised by the specificity of the question. She reached into her bag and pulled out a small notebook. Lila was a journalist at heart; she always kept notes. She flipped a few pages.

"Forensic psychology," she read. "And a secondary in criminology. From the Royal Institute." She looked up. "Which is not an easy place to get into. Or through."

I sat back, the full weight of the information settling into place. Forensic psychology. Criminology.

The hidden son of a Prime Minister who read people with the cold precision I used to read a chart.

A man who punched without hesitating because he had probably spent his whole life learning how to survive rooms far more dangerous than the sidewalk outside XUM.

The bruise on my jaw had faded days ago, but I felt a ghost of the pain return. I touched my face, just once, an involuntary movement I hoped Lila didn’t catch.

"Interesting, right?" Lila asked, her voice light.

I didn’t answer her. "Is there more?"

"There’s always more," she said, leaning back with a satisfied air. "But that’s the headline. Your ’colorful’ mystery man is considerably more than just a stylist with a rich father. He’s a powder keg."

I looked past her, toward the dark window.

Lucien Devereaux. A man trained to understand the criminal mind, hiding behind a mask of neon hair and jewelry.

He was tied to Cassian Wolfe, a man whose father was Charles Wolfe, a man with enough blood on his hands to fill a swimming pool.

And underneath the clinical assessment, a thought arrived that I hadn’t given permission to stay.

It was the same thought that had been haunting me since I felt Cyan’s fist on my jaw. It was the way his face looked when he was angry, focused, sharp, and utterly alive.

It was a distraction. I knew it was a distraction. But as I sat there in the quiet restaurant, I realized I wasn’t thinking about the Prime Minister. I wasn’t thinking about the trade deals or the scandals.

I was thinking about the way Lucien looked when he stood over me. And for the first time in years, I found myself curious about something that couldn’t be found in a medical textbook.