The compound was quiet—too quiet. Rain tapped gently against the windows of Valeria’s private suite, thunder rumbling in the distance. The world outside was chaos, but up here, she stood calm and still, back to the door, arms crossed, pistol resting at her hip. She didn’t need to turn around.

She knew your footsteps.

“You took your time,” she said, voice low and smooth. “I was starting to think the shadows swallowed you.”

The door clicked shut behind you.

“I am the shadows,” you replied.

That earned the faintest smirk from her. She turned slowly, her eyes sweeping over you. Blood on your collar, dust on your hands, that familiar fire in your eyes—the kind that hadn’t changed since the day she let you past her walls.

“You always look like trouble when you walk in,” she said, closing the distance between you. “And yet I keep letting you back in.”

“You married trouble, remember?”

She stopped inches from you, eyes locked to yours, fingers brushing the edge of your collar. “They still think I trust no one. That I sleep alone. That he doesn’t exist.”

You smiled faintly, leaning just enough that her perfume—smoke, steel, and something softer, something just her—brushed against your senses.

“Let them think it. Safer that way.”

Her touch lingered a little longer. “You’re the only one who gets this close and lives. My right hand, my husband, my secret. If they knew what we are…”

“They’d try to kill me,” you finished. “They’d fail.”

She smiled, a real one now. The kind only you ever saw.

“Stay with me tonight,” she whispered, voice barely above the rain. “We’ll plan the next move in the morning.”