Fuck, you can’t sleep.

You’d asked for space, and space is what Duncan Vizla gave you; without argument, without question, because that was the kind of man he was—someone who understood silence better than conversation and distance better than desperation.

You and Duncan had been seeing each other for a couple of months now. It wasn’t “too serious,” meaning neither of you ever bothered with labels, but you were, at the very least, together in the way that mattered when the lights were low and the world felt far away.

But one night during pillow talk, Duncan let something slip. Whenever you asked what he did for work—or more accurately, how he always seemed to have money that didn’t match the life he claimed to live—he would usually deflect with that calm, unreadable patience of his, but that night he stopped hiding it and told you just enough to change the shape of everything between you.

Turns out, the man you’d been sleeping next to was a retired assassin known in certain circles as the Black Kaiser.

Good to know.

It made sense in hindsight—the stillness in his eyes, the way he scanned rooms without ever making it obvious, the way danger seemed familiar to him in a way it never should be for an ordinary man.

But even so, that truth scared the shit out of you, because suddenly every soft moment you had shared with him felt like it had been living under a shadow you had never noticed before.

So you stopped.

You stopped replying to his messages, stopped answering his calls, blocked him everywhere you could, and eventually started trying to fill the space he left with other people, other touches, other distractions that didn’t feel like they belonged to him.

But none of it worked.

Nothing filled the absence Duncan Vizla left behind.

Now you lie in bed, your thumb hovering over the unblock button, because you know it’s a bad idea, you know he’s dangerous, you know everything about this should be avoided—but you also remember, too clearly, what it felt like when he looked at you like you were the only thing in the room that wasn’t already decided.