Nyra came back on a Tuesday.
No warning.
No apology.
No drama.
She walked into ValeTech like she hadn't disappeared for days, like she hadn't been unreachable, like she hadn't detonated something inside Adrian Vale and left it burning.
Sneakers.
Black jeans.
Oversized hoodie.
Zero effort to impress.
The lobby felt it first.
Heads turned. Whispers followed. Screens paused mid-scroll. Someone nearly dropped their coffee.
"She's back."
Nyra clocked it all and ignored it. Her badge beeped green. Her stride was steady. Controlled. Like nothing had touched her.
Adrian found out thirty seconds later.
His assistant stood frozen in the doorway.
"…Sir. Nyra's logged in."
That was all it took.
His pen snapped in half.
"What?" His voice was calm. Too calm.
"She's on-site. Already in the dev wing."
Of course she was. Straight to work. Straight to impact.
Adrian stood so fast his chair scraped violently against the floor. He didn't bother fixing his tie this time. He didn't rehearse a tone.
By the time he reached the dev floor, Nyra was already dismantling a system flaw his senior engineers had missed for weeks.
She didn't look up when he stopped behind her.
"Your absence," Adrian said, sharp, controlled, "was undocumented."
Nyra finally glanced back.
One look.
Then nothing.
She turned back to her screen.
"I informed Elias," she said lightly. "He covered it."
That name landed like a slap.
Adrian's jaw tightened. "You don't report to Elias."
Nyra shrugged. "Funny. He didn't seem confused."
A couple of engineers pretended very hard not to listen.
Adrian leaned closer. Too close. "You don't disappear without consequences."
She smiled then.
Not sweet.
Not soft.
Dangerous.
"Then write me up," she said quietly. "Or fire me. But don't loom. It's unprofessional."
His worst nightmare.
She was right.
And she knew it.
The silence stretched. Adrian straightened slowly, every muscle screaming restraint.
"Conference room," he said. "Now."
Nyra saved her work. Deliberately. Took her time. Stood and brushed past him like he was a wall fixture.
Inside the glass room, Adrian turned the opacity on.
"Where were you," he demanded.
Nyra crossed her arms. "Recovering."
"From what?"
"Life," she replied. "You should try it."
His control cracked just a hair.
"You don't get to decide when you vanish and when you return," he said. "This is my company."
"And yet," she tilted her head, "everything still runs. Weird."
He hated her mouth.
He hated how it curled when she won.
"You think this is a game," he said.
"No," she corrected. "I think you think it is."
That did it.
Adrian turned away, dragging a hand down his face. Breathing once. Twice.
When he faced her again, his voice was colder. Sharper.
"You will stick to protocol. Office hours. Visibility. No more disappearing."
Nyra stepped closer.
Close enough that he could smell smoke in her hair. Clean. Warm. Infuriating.
"Or what?" she asked softly.
The room was a pressure chamber.
Adrian said nothing.
Because there was no answer he could give that wouldn't expose him.
Nyra watched it happen. The hesitation. The restraint. The anger with nowhere to go.
She nodded once, satisfied.
"Glad we cleared that up," she said, opening the door. "I'll send you the patch notes. You'll want to credit the team."
Then she left.
Just like that.
Adrian stood alone in the glass room, city reflected around him, pulse loud in his ears.
Worst day.
Not because she disrupted his company
But because she walked back into his life and proved something unbearable:
She didn't need permission to exist.
And he couldn't control what that did to him.