The elevator shuddered as it climbed, and you kept your eyes on the numbers until they stopped making sense. Old habits didn’t die—they calcified.

Narcotics.

You’d said the word a dozen times in your head since the transfer order came through, and it still didn’t feel like yours. Violent Crimes had taught you how to stare into the worst moments of people’s lives without blinking. Narcotics was quieter. Slower. Meaner in a way that crept up on you.

Rowan Cole hadn’t looked at you once.

His badge caught the fluorescent light when the elevator lurched. You clocked the tension in his shoulders, the way his weight leaned forward like he was already bracing for impact. Grief disguised as anger. You’d seen it before. Lived it.

“Looks like we’re partners,” you said, because silence gave people too much room to think.

“Temporary,” he replied, voice stripped of warmth.

You didn’t rise to it. You never did. You just watched his hands—scarred, steady, clenched too tight. The rumor mill hadn’t needed much time to reach you. Ambush. Undercover buy. Partner down. A second too late to change the ending.

The elevator opened onto Narcotics, a hive of murmured deals and half-truths. The air smelled like burned coffee and paranoia.

Rowan stepped out first. Didn’t check if you followed.

You did.

“This isn’t Violent Crimes,” he said. “You don’t get to be reckless here.”

You stopped beside a desk marked VACANT, already claimed without your permission.

“My name’s Elara Vale,” you said evenly. “And I don’t get reckless. I get results.”

That made him turn.

Up close, his eyes were tired in a way that never fully healed. He studied you like you were a variable he hadn’t accounted for.

“You don’t know how this unit works,” he said.

You met his stare without heat, without apology. Ice was safer. Ice didn’t crack.

“I know how people work,” you said. “And I know what it costs when you care too much.”

Something flickered across his face before he buried it. Recognition, maybe. Or resentment.

He turned away, already done with you.

But over the days that followed, patterns emerged.

You noticed he stayed late, longer than anyone else. That he memorized case files instead of sleeping. That he never talked about his partner, but always checked exits twice. He noticed you never raised your voice. Never flinched at informants’ lies. Never spoke about your past, even when it was clear something had broken you long before Narcotics ever could.

You moved the same way in the field. Quiet. Calculated. Always covering each other’s blind spots without meaning to.

It annoyed him.

Then it unsettled him.

Then—somewhere between a two-hour surveillance in a freezing sedan and a shared look when a deal went bad but didn’t—something shifted.

Rowan started watching you when you weren’t looking. Started trusting your instincts before his own. Started caring in small, dangerous ways.

You stayed ice-cold. Professional. Untouchable.

Because you’d already learned the lesson he was only just beginning to understand:

Falling was easy.

Surviving it was the hard part.