Chapter 405 - 405: The Fated Meeting. [FIXED!]

Kyle stepped away from Jane, his hands still lingering on her hips. The warmth of her body lingered on his palms. He glanced at the clock on the wall—that ornate thing with Roman numerals that belonged in a museum, not a hotel suite.

[3:15.]

Kyle noticed time was fast approaching.

"It is almost time."

The library meeting with Maya. The note he had left through Dr. Vance. If she had checked her mailbox, if she had decided to come, if she was even now walking through those doors.

He had forty-five minutes to get across London.

"I need to move."

But his body wasn't cooperating. His legs felt like rubber. His lower back ached in a way that had nothing to do with stress and everything to do with the past hour. He had a train ran on him by Cassandra and Ella after all.

"That was… intense." Kyle recalled with a smile.

He replayed fragments—Ella's hands on his shoulders, Cassandra's breath in his ear, the steam curling around three bodies pressed together in the shower. He had never been with two women at once, not like that.

Not where everyone was fully present, fully willing, fully focused on nothing but sensation.

"The most intense sex of my life."

And now he had to walk out the door and pretend his brain wasn't still floating somewhere near the ceiling.

Jane had drifted toward the couch, her cheeks still pink, her fingers touching her lips where he had kissed her. She looked like she was still processing the promise of tonight.

"Tonight. Just her. I can't forget that."

But first, Maya, Kyle knew this took priority above all else as it had the potential to shift the entire dynamic.

Kyle pulled out his phone. Checked the time again. 3:17.

"I have to go."

He cleared his throat. Ella was still on the far side of the suite, Jasmine now curled up beside her on the couch, half-asleep, the fountain adventure finally catching up with her. Junior's stroller sat near the window, the baby still dreaming.

"Hey," Kyle said, keeping his voice low. "I need to step out."

Ella looked up, her eyes met his, and something passed between them—a flicker of understanding, maybe, or suspicion. She had been watching him all day. She knew he had gone to take care of business that didn't involve them. She knew about his involvement with the more dangerous forces of this world, the hushed conversations, the way he kept checking his phone.

She didn't know the details. But she knew enough.

"Again?" Ella asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Just a few errands," Kyle said. "I won't be long."

Jane looked over from the couch, her expression soft and unconcerned. "Do you want company?"

"No," Kyle said quickly. Too quickly. He softened his voice. "I'll be back before dinner, I promise."

Jane nodded. She didn't push. That was her way—gentle, trusting, never demanding.

Ella, on the other hand, was still watching him. Her eyebrow hadn't come down.

Kyle walked toward the door, grabbing his jacket from the hook. His shoes were by the entrance—he slipped them on without sitting down.

"Kyle."

Ella's voice stopped him.

He turned.

She had crossed the room without him noticing. She stood close now, close enough that Jane and Jasmine couldn't hear.

"Be careful," Ella said quietly.

The words hung in the air between them. She wasn't talking about traffic. She wasn't talking about pickpockets or bad weather. She knew about the dangerous people. The mafia, Marcello, Viktor. The shadows Kyle had been dancing with since before London. But Cleopatra had shown her something that day, it was Kyle had the means to survive such encounters.

Kyle held her gaze. "I will."

She didn't say anything else. Just reached up and straightened his collar—a small, almost maternal gesture that felt heavier than it should.

Then she stepped back.

Kyle opened the door and walked into the hallway.

The elevator ride felt too slow. The lobby felt too bright. The doorman's cheerful "Good evening, sir" felt like a delay he couldn't afford.

Kyle stepped outside and hailed a cab.

"The art school on Harrington," he said, sliding into the back seat. "The one with the ivy."

The driver nodded and pulled into traffic.

Kyle leaned his head against the window. London blurred past—red buses, black cabs, pedestrians in coats. His mind churned.

"If she shows up, I have to be careful. She doesn't know who I am. She doesn't know about Marcello. She doesn't know about the life she escaped." Kyle assumed because if she did, she would have tried to reach out but the fact that Marcello thought she was dead told him everything he needed to know.

"I can't just walk up and say 'Your father is a crime boss and he's been looking for you.'"

"I need to feel her out. See what she remembers. See what she wants."

The cab turned onto a narrow street. The school's ivy-covered walls came into view.

Kyle checked his phone.

[3:48.]

"Twelve minutes."

He paid the driver, stepped out, and walked toward the library.

The doors loomed ahead as Kyle's eyes naturally darted around to make sure he was not being watched.

Somewhere inside, Maya would be waiting.

Kyle pushed the thought of Ella and Cassandra out of his head. Pushed the promise of tonight with Jane to the back of his mind.

"Focus."

He had one job right now.

Find the girl, everything else could wait.

-

Maya settled into her usual corner of the library—the one near the stained-glass window, where the afternoon light turned everything gold and amber. She spread her books across the table: three thick volumes on Baroque sculpture, a notebook filled with her cramped handwriting, and a pencil that had been chewed down to the wood.

"This is where I belong."

Not in crowded parties, not on dates with persistent boys. Here, among books that didn't judge, among pages that held answers instead of questions.

She glanced at the note again before tucking it into her pocket. The handwriting was familiar—neat, formal, slightly slanted. Dr. Vance. The head of the school. He had written the message, not some stranger.

"That means no harm can come to me."

Dr. Vance wasn't the type to set traps. He was cautious, careful, maybe a little too proper. If he had agreed to pass along a note, it meant he had vetted the person behind it. Or at least convinced himself that no danger would walk through those chapel doors.

Maya didn't remember much about "before." Fragments, mostly. A large house with tall windows. A man's voice—deep, commanding. The smell of cigar smoke but the memories were like dreams: vivid in the moment, gone by morning.

She shook her head and opened up another book book.

"Focus. I can't afford to screw this up."

Her parents—Susan and David, the only parents who mattered—had been so supportive of her art history path. They didn't have much money, not like some of the other students' families, but they had given her everything they could. Tuition, books, a room in their home. They never asked about her life before. They never made her feel like a mystery to be solved.

"I will not disappoint them or myself."

The words on the page blurred. She was reading about Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, the way marble could be made to look like fabric, like flesh, like divine intervention. The prose was dense, academic, the kind of writing that demanded full attention.

[4:00 PM]

Kyle pushed open the heavy wooden doors of the library.

The air inside was different—cooler, quieter. Stained-glass windows cast colored light across the floor, and the ceiling vaulted high above, crisscrossed with beams that had probably been there for centuries.

"This place is a cathedral for book lovers."

He took a step forward, and the floor creaked beneath his shoe.

Several heads lifted.

Students—maybe a dozen scattered across the main reading room—looked up from their books, their laptops, their notes. Some blinked, as if waking from a dream. Others stared openly.

Kyle was tall. That was the first thing they noticed. Tall and lean, with shoulders that filled out his jacket in a way that said he worked out but didn't obsess over it. His face was symmetrical in the way that made people do double takes—strong jaw, clear skin, eyes that seemed to hold more than they let on.

He wasn't dressed like a student. No hoodie, no backpack, no coffee stain on his shirt. He looked like someone who had walked out of a magazine and into their study hall.

A girl with purple hair whispered something to the person beside her. A boy with glasses adjusted them for the third time in ten seconds. Someone's pencil dropped, and the sound echoed like a gunshot.

Kyle pretended not to notice.

"Here we go again."

He had no idea where Maya was sitting. The library was huge—multiple aisles, a mezzanine level, alcoves hidden behind arches. She could be anywhere.

"I need to move like I know where I'm going. Confidence. Always confidence."

He walked toward the center of the room, his footsteps deliberately steady. His eyes swept left, then right, cataloging faces without staring. None of them matched the photograph Nakamura had given him.

"Keep moving."

He turned down an aisle lined with art history texts—fitting, given the school's focus. At the end of the aisle, a boy sat alone at a small table.

The boy was young—early twenties, maybe. Lanky, with floppy hair that kept falling over his forehead. He wasn't reading. He was watching the door. Watching Kyle.

"He might know something."

Kyle's instinct prickled. He had learned to trust that feeling—the same feeling that had kept him alive in rooms full of killers, in deals that could have gone sideways, in moments when one wrong move meant everything.

He met the boy's gaze.

The boy didn't look away immediately. His jaw tightened, his shoulders squared. For a split second, Kyle recognized the posture—the silent challenge, the "I'm-not-backing-down" stance that young men used when they felt threatened.

"Ah. A dick-measuring contest, cute."

Kyle smiled.

Not a smirk, nor a challenge. Just a friendly, disarming smile that said "I'm not here to fight you."

Then he walked over and sat down across from the boy.

The boy blinked, clearly thrown off. He had been prepared for a staring contest, not for a stranger to invade his table.

"Hey," Kyle said, keeping his voice low. "I'm looking for someone. Maybe you can help me."

The boy—Leo, though Kyle didn't know that yet—swallowed. His eyes flickered toward a corner of the library, then back to Kyle.

"I don't know anyone," Leo said, his voice tight.

Kyle leaned back, spreading his hands. "I haven't told you who I'm looking for yet."

Leo's mouth opened before closing again.

"He's nervous. Not because he's scared of me but because he's scared of what I might want."

Kyle had seen that look before. It was the look of someone protecting something or someone.

"I'm looking for a girl," Kyle said. "She's about twenty-one. Dark hair, studies art history. I believe she's here, in this library, right now."

Leo's face went pale.

"I don't—I can't—" Leo stammered.

Kyle held up a hand. "Relax. I'm not here to steal her away from you. I'm here to talk to her. That's all." Kyle could tell that look, it was the look of a boy scared that a more attractive man would take his lady which meant the boy liked him.

Leo stared at him, searching for the lie. Finding none.

"She's in the corner," Leo said finally, his voice barely a whisper. "By the stained-glass window. But if you do anything—"

"I won't and thank you,"

Kyle stood up, nodded once, and walked toward the corner.

Leo watched him go, his hands clenched into fists.

Behind him, the library doors creaked. Someone else entered.

But Kyle didn't look back, he had found his target.