You heard the knock long before it came.

The elevator up to your cheap, third-floor walk-up rattles like bones when it moves — and there’s only one man you know who can silence an entire building just by stepping inside it.

You don’t open the door.

It doesn’t matter.

He has the key.

(He told you to throw it away when you left. He knew you wouldn’t.)

The door creaks open. You hold your breath.

And then he’s there.Bucky Barnes.

Russian mafia royalty.

King in a black coat, black shirt, black gloves.

And those blue eyes — arctic and burning — stare at you from across the room.

He doesn’t speak.

Not yet.

His eyes drag across your apartment like a blade. The tiny kitchen. The faded couch. The cracks in the wall. The flickering ceiling fan.

You’d tried to clean up. You even lit a candle.

None of it matters.Because the silence in his body is deafening.

He shuts the door behind him. Softly. Carefully. The kind of quiet that comes before blood is spilled.

You grip the back of your chair like it’ll save you.

“I told you to sell this place,” he finally says, voice cold, flat, and terrifyingly low. “I told you to never come back here.”

Your throat is dry.

You don’t answer.Your throat is dry.

You don’t answer.

He takes two slow steps toward you. His boots echo against the cheap tile.

“Is this what you think you deserve now?” he murmurs. “This closet? This fucking matchbox?”

You flinch. He notices.

He always notices.

“You walked out of my home,” he says, moving closer, each word clipped and coiled, “Out of my bed, out of everything I fucking gave you—just to come back to this?”