The bell over the door shrieks again.
I don’t look up right away. My hands are full—one chipped mug of decaf, one plate of something that started life as a cinnamon roll and ended as sugar glue. The Tuesday night graveyard shift at Benny’s Grind is a special corner of hell: flickering fluorescent lights, burnt espresso, and the kind of customers who mistake my name tag for permission.
"Refill?" I ask the suit slumped in the corner booth.
He grunts without lifting his eyes from his phone. I top him off and step away, counting out change in my head, tracking the soundscape like I always do. Two truckers at the counter debating sports. Espresso machine hissing like it hates everyone equally. Oldies station humming from the greasy speakers. The rain outside slapping against the window in uneven bursts.
And one new set of footsteps.
He doesn’t belong here. I know that before I see him. The steps are wrong: measured, unhurried, the click of expensive soles on the cracked black-and-white tiles. Everyone else shuffles or stomps. This is… deliberate.
My skin tightens, that cold shimmer I’ve come to recognize as danger prickling just under the surface.
Don’t look. Don’t stare. That’s Rule One.
"Hart!" Benny shouts from the back. "We’re outta filters. Again. And table three’s been waiting ten minutes. Move."
"Got it," I call, forcing my shoulders down. I grab the stained menus from the counter, paste on a professional dead-eyed smile, and turn toward table three.
He’s already watching me.
The room narrows.
I know that face. Not from life—I would remember a man like that—but from screens, snippets on the tiny TV in my basement room, headlines I scroll past and then scroll back to because power like his warps the air even through pixels.
Adrian Volt.
He looks wrong in Benny’s—the billionaire wolf dropped in a rundown petting zoo. Dark charcoal suit that fits like sin and money, white shirt unbuttoned at the throat like this is casual for him. No tie. No coat despite the rain; someone probably carried it. His hair is dark, rain-damp at the ends, swept back in a way that should look affected but doesn’t. Too precise, like the rest of him.
But it’s his eyes that freeze me.
On TV they’re just… intense. Here, they’re a weapon. Steel gray, focused, so sharp they feel like hands on my throat. He doesn’t look around, doesn’t take in the peeling posters or the cracked ketchup bottle. He looks only at me, like he’s been waiting.
My stride falters for a heartbeat.
Move. Smile. Don’t be prey.
"Evening," I manage, my voice steady because it’s had practice. I drop the laminated menu on the table, not too close, not too far. "Coffee’s fresh-ish. Food’s edible. What can I get you?"
His gaze lowers to my name tag, then rises slowly.
"Tessa Hart," he says.
The way he says it is worse than if he’d shouted. Soft, smooth, threaded with recognition that turns my name into a verdict.
My pulse starts pounding in my ears. I’m suddenly aware of the hum of the fridge behind the counter, the itchy polyester of my uniform sticking to my damp spine, the faint chemical lemon of the floor cleaner that never quite masks the grease.
"That’s what it says," I reply, injecting a little bite into it. Sarcasm is armor. "So, coffee?"
