Chapter 51 LONDON CALLING
Ava's POV
Two days passed faster than I expected and before I fully processed everything that had happened in that warehouse, I was standing in Dominic's bedroom watching him pack a bag like a man who had done this a thousand times, calm and efficient while my whole world was still spinning.
"You don't have to come," he said without looking at me, folding a shirt neatly.
"I know," I said, sitting on the edge of the bed, "I'm coming anyway."
He looked up at that and something moved in his eyes but he didn't argue, just nodded and went back to packing, and I took that as my answer and went to get my own things.
Isabella met me in the hallway looking tired but steady, the kind of steady that comes after something breaks you and you put yourself back together through sheer stubbornness.
"I'll hold things here," she said, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, "just come back in one piece."
"Always do," I said and she gave me a look that said we both knew that wasn't entirely true anymore.
Adrian was already in the car when we came down and he had coffee ready which was the most useful thing anyone had done for me in days, and I took it and sat in the back next to Dominic and watched the city move past the window as we drove to the airfield.
The private jet was small and clean and smelled like leather and Dominic's cologne, and once we were in the air and Adrian had fallen asleep in the front section, it was just the two of us in the back with nothing to hide behind anymore.
"Tell me something true," I said, turning to look at him.
He met my eyes slowly. "What do you want to know?"
"Anything," I said, "everything, I don't know, just something that isn't a deflection."
He was quiet for a moment and then he said, "I've been alive longer than you can imagine and in all that time I have never once wanted to keep someone the way I want to keep you," and then he looked away like saying it cost him something.
I didn't know what to do with that so I put my head on his shoulder and he tensed for a second before his hand came up and settled in my hair and we stayed like that without talking, the plane cutting through dark sky above the Atlantic.
I fell asleep somewhere over the ocean and when I woke up he was still awake, completely still, his hand still in my hair and his eyes fixed on me in a way that should have made me feel watched but didn't, it made me feel like something precious being guarded and I was still figuring out how to feel about that when I realized his eyes weren't blue.
They were gold.
He didn't know I was awake, that was the thing, he thought I was still sleeping and so his face was completely unguarded and those gold eyes were moving over me slowly, not threatening, just watching, the way you look at something you're terrified of losing, and I felt my breath go shallow and I kept very still because something told me if he knew I had seen this he would pull back and I didn't want him to pull back.
I lay there with my eyes mostly closed and let him watch me and wondered what exactly I had gotten myself into and whether it was too late to be afraid and decided that yes, it probably was.
We landed in London in the grey early morning, the city wet and cold outside the car windows as Adrian drove us to the hotel, and Dominic was already on his phone dealing with lawyers and court times and I pressed my forehead against the glass and watched London go past and thought about gold eyes in the dark.
The hotel suite was enormous with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Thames and Dominic disappeared into a meeting within thirty minutes of us arriving, the door barely closed before his phone was already ringing again, and Adrian went with him which left me alone in a city I didn't know with nothing but my own thoughts for company.
I lasted about an hour before I put on my coat and went out.
London was loud and grey and alive in a way New York was but differently, older somehow, the streets narrower, everything carrying the weight of a long history, and I walked without any particular direction just needing to move and breathe and feel like a normal person for twenty minutes.
I found a coffee shop and sat near the window with something warm and watched people walk past and let my mind go quiet for the first time in days.
That's when I noticed him.
He was across the street, leaning against a wall with his hands in his coat pockets, and he wasn't doing anything threatening, just standing there, but his eyes were on me and had been since I sat down, I was certain of it, that feeling of being watched that you can't always explain but you never ignore.
I looked directly at him and he didn't look away.
I paid quickly and left through the side door, walking faster than I needed to, taking two turns and then a third, and when I looked back he was still there, half a block behind, unhurried, like he wasn't worried about keeping up.
I walked back to the hotel fast, through the lobby and up to the suite, and locked the door behind me and stood in the middle of the room catching my breath and telling myself it was nothing, probably nothing, London was a big city and people walked behind people all the time.
But I knew it wasn't nothing.
I was still standing there when the suite door opened with a keycard and I spun around ready to scream and it was Dominic, back earlier than expected, taking one look at my face and going still.
"What happened," he said, not a question.
"Someone followed me," I said, "a man, I don't know who he was."
His jaw tightened and he crossed the room and put his hands on my face, checking me over quickly, and I let him because my heart was still going too fast.
"I'm fine," I said, "he didn't do anything, he just watched me."
Dominic dropped his hands and pulled out his phone and I could already see the anger working its way through him, quiet and controlled and somehow more frightening than if he had just shouted.
"I told you not to go out alone," he said.
"You told me nothing, you walked into a meeting," I said back.
He looked at me and I looked at him and neither of us had the energy to fight about it properly so it just sat there between us, unresolved.
He ordered food up to the suite and we ate in near silence and I kept looking at him across the table trying to find the man I thought I knew inside the one I was still figuring out, and the strange thing was he was both, same hands, same jaw, same way of looking at me like I was the only thing in the room, just with more underneath than I had known about.
"Stop staring at me like that," he said without looking up from his plate.
"Like what," I said.
"Like you're trying to decide something."
"Maybe I am," I said and he looked up then and we held each other's gaze for a long moment and I thought about gold eyes in the dark of the plane and my chest did something complicated.
"Whatever you're deciding," he said quietly, going back to his food, "take your time."
I didn't answer but something about the way he said it settled something in me, just slightly.
The sound of the suite door opening again was what woke me, soft and careful like someone trying not to be heard, and I sat up fast because Dominic was already in the bedroom with me, I could hear him in the bathroom.
I got up and went to the sitting room and it was empty.
Except it wasn't.
A man was standing near the window, not the man from the street, different, younger, and he held up both hands immediately when he saw me like he'd expected me to scream.
"I'm not here to hurt you," he said quickly.
"Then why are you in my hotel room," I said, backing toward the bedroom door where Dominic was.
His eyes dropped to my shoulder, to the neckline of my shirt, and something shifted in his expression, recognition and something close to relief.
"Your mark is showing," he said quietly, and he took one step toward me and touched my shoulder lightly with two fingers and I felt it, a warmth spreading out from where he touched, and I looked down and through the fabric I could see it, a faint glow under my skin, like something lit from inside.