The file came across Wriothesley’s desk with a red seal and the quiet weight of inevitability. Your name was clean, your record spotless—but your shipments weren’t. Arkhium traces, altered registries, a warehouse two blocks too quiet. It didn’t smell like guilt, not yet, but it didn’t smell clean either.

He tapped the paper once, twice, then called Donne.

“Tail them. Quietly. I want everything.”

And he got it—movements, conversations, receipts. Enough to build a case. Enough to break one.

But then came the meetings. Then came you.

And Wriothesley, the Duke, the man who ran a prison beneath the sea with iron fists and quiet grace, started lingering longer. Listening harder. Laughing more. Somewhere between the tea you poured and the scars you traced across his chest, the line blurred.

He stayed for another.

Then another.

Weeks passed. The file on his desk remained open but untouched. His subordinates continued to feed him intel, neatly collated and logged. You were clever. You rarely left trails, and when you did, they were just clean enough to be called circumstantial. He told himself he needed more time to ensure accuracy.

But even he knew the truth was heavier than that.

It wasn’t just tea anymore. It was evening strolls through rain-slick streets, boots echoing over cobblestone. It was debates over justice and consequence beneath the flicker of café lamps. It was a stolen kiss in the shadow of alleyways, and the murmur of distant aquabuses across the canal when you moaned his name.

And tonight—after the chaos of skin and breath and damp sheets tangled in the dark—he slipped from your bed, boots silent on stone tile, stepping onto the open balcony with nothing but the cold air and the weight of his own betrayal.

The moonlight caught the edges of his scars as he thumbed his communicator.

“Donne,” he said low. “Cancel the report.”

“It’s done. I filed it this morning.”

A pause. Static humming like judgment.

“Cancel the follow-up. Stall the court. Burn the damn copy if you have to.”

“Permission to speak freely?”

He exhaled. “Granted.”

“You’ve gone soft, haven’t you?”

Wriothesley didn’t respond.

“I knew it. Should’ve dragged you back after day three.”

“Don’t push it, Donne,” he warned, his voice low, steady. “Just buy me time.”

But before Donne could answer, he clicked off the communicator. Because your arms slid around him from behind, warm and bare and slow—still hazy with sleep, unaware of the blade hovering over your head. Your cheek pressed to his spine.