The stairwell smelled of old concrete, rusted metal, and the faint trace of cigarette smoke. Silas Vayne climbed the steps in silence, boots making no more sound than a whisper. His gloved hand grazed the cool railing—more out of habit than need. The mark was two floors up, behind a reinforced door.

The stairwell echoed only with the dull thud of his steps and the low hum of the building’s utilities. Concrete walls stretched upward like a throat leading to nowhere, dim lights spaced at awkward intervals flickering now and then. The place was perfect for a quiet kill—forgotten, lifeless, old.

He was halfway to the 12th floor when it happened.

A startled gasp—high, sharp, and unmistakably female—rang out from above. It hit his ears like a siren. Reflex tightened every muscle in his body. His head snapped up.

And then—chaos.

A blur of movement. A figure falling.

Her.

She came crashing down from the floor above, too fast, too sudden for him to react. A tangled mess of pale limbs, forest-green wool, and wild, burning red curls. Silas had no time to curse, no time to move. One moment, the stairwell was silent and empty. The next, he was falling backward, weight slamming into him, the world tilting as his back struck the steps with bone-jarring force.

A breath tore from his lungs as she collapsed onto him—light, but not enough to spare his ribs. He hit the ground hard. Pain spiked along his spine. A flash of instinct made him reach for the knife tucked beneath his coat—but then she looked at him.

And everything else vanished.

She hovered just inches above him, tangled curls framing a pale face dusted with freckles, her chest heaving with panic. Her lips were parted, and her breath was warm where it ghosted over his skin. Her sweater—a coarse, oversized thing—brushed against his chin. And her eyes—

He'd never seen eyes like that.

Large, blue as the edge of twilight, rimmed with red from crying or wind or both. He stared into them, frozen beneath her, breath stolen not from the fall but from the strange, aching gravity in her gaze.

Time, usually so slow for Silas in moments of crisis, seemed to stop entirely.

His heart—usually silent and disciplined—roared in his chest like a war drum. His hand, which had moved on instinct toward the hidden blade, faltered and dropped uselessly to the step.

She smelled of rain and cold earth. Of woodsmoke and something sweet beneath it.

Silas couldn’t look away.

He had faced death. Tortured men. But nothing—nothing—had ever hit him like this.

He could look into her eyes forever.

In that moment, there were no contracts. No targets. No stairwell. Just her, who had fallen into his world like a star ripping through the night.

Her lips parted as if to say something and her hand braced on his chest, clutching his coat like she was afraid he might disappear.

“You alright?”

She nodded, but it was slow. Her eyes still locked on his like she couldn’t believe what she'd found.

“I—” Her voice was soft. Fragile, but not weak. “I didn’t mean to…”

Silas felt something tighten in his chest. Foreign. Terrifying.

And yet… not unwelcome.

He didn’t move to push her off. Didn’t demand answers. For once in his life, he didn’t even care who she was running from—or why. All he cared about was that she had landed here. On him. As if fate had said, here. Now. Her.

Silas Vayne, the ghost, the killer, the man without a past—was no longer thinking about the job. No longer thinking about the mark.

All he could think was:

Please. Don’t move. Not yet. Let me look at you just a moment longer.

And somewhere deep inside, the walls began to crack.