The days after the confrontation were quiet.
But not peaceful.
Aaria stayed close to Rafael—almost as if afraid to drift too far. She moved through his penthouse like a ghost… but not lost. Searching.
He watched her.
The way she stared out the window.
The way she flinched in her sleep.
The way she sometimes looked at him like he was a beautiful cage.
And Rafael?
He felt it too.
The distance.
Not from each other.
But from the versions of themselves that existed before this.
Before pain. Before obsession. Before love came dressed in scars.
One night, Aaria sat by the floor-to-ceiling window, curled in his hoodie, holding a mug she hadn't touched in an hour.
He approached quietly.
"You're thinking too loud," he said.
She smiled faintly. "I'm trying to remember what I was like before you."
He stiffened. "And?"
She looked at him.
"I think I was quieter. But not better."
He sat down beside her. "You want to go back?"
She shook her head.
"No. I just want to know who I am when I'm not surviving."
The silence wrapped around them like a blanket.
But then he said, low and distant:
"There's something you don't know, Aaria."
She turned. "What?"
He didn't look at her.
"I had a deal. Years ago. With a family in Mumbai."
Her chest tightened.
"And?"
"They wanted to marry off a girl. Said she was a liability. Broken. Difficult."
He finally looked at her, and her blood ran cold.
"They offered you to me. Like a gift."
Aaria froze.
"I said no," Rafael said quickly. "Even then, I wasn't that kind of monster."
"Then why are you telling me this now?"
"Because they're back. The same family. Different offer."
Her fingers clenched around the mug.
"What do they want?"
He hesitated.
"You."
Meanwhile, across the city, a man in a grey suit lit a cigarette and watched Aaria's photograph slide across his desk.
"She's the key," he murmured. "Get her to leave him. Rafael Viera will follow."
"And if she won't?"
"Then we find what even he can't protect her from."
Later that night, Aaria stood in front of Rafael in the darkened bedroom.
Bare.
But not for pleasure.
For honesty.
"If they come for me," she said, "let them try."
His breath hitched.
"And if I can't stop them?"
She stepped closer. Took his face in her hands.
"Then burn for me, Rafael."
He kissed her like the world was already in ashes.