Elias’s POV

Stillness is my power.

Not words. Not force. Stillness.

A quiet presence commands more than chaos ever could. When you speak less, people lean in. When you move less, people hesitate.

That is control.

But right now—right now, I can feel it splintering at the edges. Like a mirror with a single crack, spreading slowly, insidiously.

I do not like this.

Max should have destroyed that letter. He should have set fire to it, torn it apart, erased it from existence. Instead, he put it in his pocket.

As if it belonged to him.

My fingers twitch at my sides. The movement is small, but I hate it.

I hate him.

That’s not the right word. Hate is reckless. Hate is an admission of emotion.

But there is something about Max that makes my skin crawl.

Not fear. I do not fear him.

It’s something else.

It’s in the way he looked at me.

A single second. A brief moment. An unspoken exchange that should have meant nothing.

But it wasn’t nothing. It was everything.

Because Max saw me.

Not the Elias that I allow the world to see—the measured, composed, untouchable version of myself.

No. He saw the shift.

He saw the hesitation. The crack. The slip in my stillness.

And worst of all—he enjoyed it.

I saw it in his eyes. That glint, sharp and knowing. That almost-smile, curling at the edges of his lips like a secret he wasn’t ready to share yet.

I should have looked away first. I should have broken the stare, turned my back, ended it.

But I didn’t.

I couldn’t.

And now, Max knows.

Not everything. Not yet. But enough.

The weight of the room shifts. Amina is watching me.

Her gaze is sharp, dissecting, peeling back layers I do not want exposed. She has always been perceptive, but now?

Now, she is dangerous.

She tilts her head slightly, and I know what’s coming before she even says it.

“Elias... do you know something?”

The words are simple. Deceptively light. But the way she says them—it is not a question. It is an accusation.

I do not react.

I will not react.

Instead, I smile. Slow. Calculated.

Controlled.

“What exactly do you think I know?”

A challenge. A test. If she is smart, she will back down. If she is foolish, she will press forward.

She does neither.

She just watches. Waiting.

Rayhan, too. He is studying the room like a puzzle, pulling apart the pieces, trying to connect them. He does not trust me. That much is obvious.

Max, on the other hand—Max is watching something else entirely.

He is watching the unraveling.

My unraveling.

I exhale slowly through my nose. A controlled breath. A deliberate breath.

Control, Elias.

Control.

But inside—inside, something is twisting.

Something is slipping through my grasp.

I have spent my entire life mastering the art of restraint. I do not lose control.

And yet—

My fingers curl into my palm before I can stop them. My jaw tightens just enough for Max to notice.

And he does.

Of course he does.

That grin sharpens, just a fraction, just enough to make my stomach turn. He knows.

I hate this.

I hate him.

No.

That is not the right word. That is not the right feeling.

But it is close.

Max is dangerous. Not in the obvious way. Not in the way most people think.

He is dangerous because he understands the game.

And worse—he enjoys it.

The tension in the room thickens. It is suffocating, cloying, wrong.

I need to regain control. I need to—

The door chimes.

The sound is sharp, splitting through the silence like a blade.

I close my eyes for half a second, inhaling through my nose.

Zach.

I do not have to turn around to confirm it.

I already know.

Because the second he steps in, the entire atmosphere shifts.

The balance changes.

And for the first time in a long time—

I do not know what happens next.

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