The black sedan arrived exactly at 11:45 PM.
As I stepped into the backseat, the air felt colder than usual. I was still shaking from the encounter with Silas. His eyes—those stormy, restless grey eyes—haunted me. He knew. He knew about the nights. He knew about the music.
How?
When the elevator doors opened at the penthouse, I didn't find the usual vast, empty silence. I found Julian waiting for me right at the threshold of the darkness.
"You're late," he said. His voice was like a whip—short and sharp.
"I'm three minutes early, actually," I snapped back, my nerves frayed. "But maybe time moves differently for billionaires."
I walked past him, heading toward the piano room by memory. But his hand shot out, grabbing my upper arm. He didn't pull me, but the heat of his palm through my sleeve made me gasp.
"Stop," he commanded. "The rules are changing tonight."
"What are you talking about? We have a contract."
"The contract says absolute obedience, Kira. And tonight, I need to know you can be trusted even when the darkness isn't enough."
I turned toward his voice. I couldn't see his face, but I could feel the intensity radiating off him. "What does that mean?"
I heard the rustle of fabric. Then, I felt something soft and cool touch my forehead.
Silk.
"A blindfold?" I pulled back, my heart starting to thrum a frantic beat against my ribs. "No. Julian, no. It's already pitch black in here. Why would you—"
"Because you've started to learn the layout of this room," he whispered, his voice moving closer until his breath was warm against my ear. "You're comfortable. You're navigating the shadows like they're your friends. But tonight, I am the only thing you are allowed to rely on."
"This is about Silas, isn't it?" I asked, my voice trembling. "He said something to me today. He whistled the music I played for you. He knows, Julian."
I felt him stiffen. The grip on my arm tightened for a fraction of a second before he let go.
"Silas is a ghost story told to children to make them behave. He is nothing. But he is proof that my walls are not as thick as I thought."
He stepped behind me. I felt the silk ribbon wrap around my head, covering my eyes. He tied it at the back of my head, his fingers brushing against the nape of my neck. I shivered. The darkness was now absolute.
Even the faint, tiny glimmers of light from the city that usually seeped through the heavy curtains were gone. I was trapped in a world of pure, velvet nothingness.
"Julian," I whispered, my voice sounding small and fragile. "I don't like this."
"I know," he murmured. "That's why we're doing it."
He took my hand. His fingers interlaced with mine. It was a strange, intimate gesture—something a lover would do, not a man who owned a debt. He led me forward. Without my sight, every other sense was amplified. I could hear the hum of the building's ventilation. I could smell the faint scent of his soap—something clean and sharp, like pine needles.
I could feel the way his body moved next to mine.
"Where are we going?"
"Nowhere you haven't been before," he said.
"But you're going to experience it differently."
He stopped. I felt the edge of a chair against the back of my knees. Not the piano bench.
A soft, plush armchair.
"Sit."
I sat. The velvet of the chair felt like a caress.
I felt Julian move away, but he didn't go far. I heard him pour a drink—the clink of ice against glass.
"Why am I here?" I asked. "I'm supposed to play."
"Not yet. Tonight, I want you to tell me a story."
"A story?" I laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. "I don't have stories for you, Mr. Thorne. You bought my music, not my memories."
"The music is the memories, Kira. Every note you played last night was a eulogy. Who were you playing for?"
I bit my lip, the blindfold pressing against my skin. "My father. He was a good man. He believed in beauty. He believed that if you worked hard and played from the heart, the world would be kind to you."
"He was wrong," Julian said. I heard him take a sip of his drink. "The world isn't kind. It's a ledger. Everything has a price."
"He wasn't wrong until your family showed up," I spat. "The Thorne Group didn't just buy his company. You liquidated it. You fired the staff who had been there for twenty years. You took the house he built for my mother. You broke him, Julian. You didn't just take his money. You took his reason for living."
The silence that followed was heavy. I waited for him to snap at me, to tell me to shut up and go to the piano. But he didn't.
"I was twenty-one when my father did that,"
Julian said quietly. "I didn't have a seat at the table. I was just a shadow in his office, learning how to be a monster."
"And you learned well," I whispered.
"I learned that mercy is a luxury the powerful can't afford. But I also learned that some things are worth more than a profit margin."
I felt the chair shift. He was sitting on the arm of it, right next to me. The heat of him was overwhelming.
"Reach out your hand," he commanded.
"Why?"
"Trust me."
I reached out my hand into the void. His hand met mine. But he didn't just hold it. He turned my palm upward and placed something small and heavy in it. It felt like cold metal.
A key.
"What is this?"
"A key to a storage unit in the North End," he said. "Inside are the archives of Rossi Records. The masters, the original recordings, the photographs. My father ordered them destroyed. I… moved them."
I gasped, my fingers curling around the key.
"You saved them?"
"I didn't like the idea of something that beautiful being turned into landfill."
My eyes filled with tears behind the blindfold.
All this time, I had hated him for being a Thorne, for being part of the machine that crushed my life. And yet, he had been keeping a piece of my heart safe in a dusty warehouse for years.
"Why are you telling me this now?" I choked out.
"Because Silas is looking for leverage,"
Julian whispered. He leaned down, his forehead resting against mine. The silk was the only thing between us. "He thinks he can use you to hurt me. He thinks if he can prove I have a weakness, he can take my throne."
"Am I your weakness?" I breathed.
His hand came up, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw beneath the blindfold. His touch was so light, so careful, it made my heart ache.
"You're a debt I can't seem to collect, Kira.
And that makes you the most dangerous thing in my life."
He pulled me up from the chair. I was still blind, still lost, but with his hand on my waist, I felt more grounded than I ever had in the light. He led me to the piano.
"Play," he whispered. "Play for the girl who isn't a waitress. Play for the girl who still has her father's heart."
I sat at the bench. I didn't take off the blindfold. I didn't need to. I reached for the keys, and for the first time, I didn't play out of hate. I played out of a confused, terrifying kind of gratitude.
The music flowed out of me like a river. It was soft, haunting, and full of secrets. I played until the sun began to rise, and when Julian finally untied the silk from my eyes, the world was grey and soft.
He was standing by the door, his face hidden in the shadows.
"The key is yours," he said. "Don't lose it."
I looked down at the small silver key in my palm. My life was a mess. My brother was a gambler, my enemy was my savior, and I was falling in love with a man I wasn't allowed to see.
"Julian?"
"No names," he said, his voice returning to that cold, distant tone.
But as I walked to the elevator, I saw his hand resting on the doorframe. It was shaking. Just a little.
The Ice King wasn't just melting. He was cracking. And I knew that when he finally broke, the whole city would feel the impact.