The café looks the same. Warm lights, worn-out tables, the smell of coffee. That corner where you used to hide from the world, pretending you weren’t a detective and he wasn’t the damn center of a criminal organization bleeding through the city streets. A stage. A lie. A safe place.

Until today.

You see him before he sees you. Or at least you think so. Thom is sitting with his back to the wall, as always. Calm eyes but you know they never really are. There’s tension in his jaw that wasn’t there before, a shadow under his eyes that you can’t tell if it’s from sleepless nights… or from the things he’s done.

“You came,” he says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like you’re not the same person who’s been following him for weeks.

“What the hell are you doing?”