Nyra hadn't planned to light it.
The cigarette had been sitting there for ten minutes—balanced between her fingers, unlit, forgotten while the city breathed below her. Night air pressed cool against her skin, sharp and honest in a way people rarely were.
She told herself it was just muscle memory.
That lie tasted familiar.
Elias leaned against the balcony doorframe behind her, silent the way he got when he didn't want to influence the moment. He'd followed her out without asking questions, without offering advice. That alone was enough to irritate her.
"You're thinking too loud," he said eventually.
She smirked. "Didn't know I made noise."
"You do when you spiral."
Nyra glanced at him sideways. "You've been taking notes."
"Since Zurich."
She looked back at the city. The cigarette trembled slightly between her fingers not from fear, not from craving. From recognition.
She flicked the lighter.
The flame jumped. The tip burned. Smoke curled into the air like it had been waiting for her.
Elias stiffened.
He didn't say don't.
Didn't say again?
Didn't say you promised.
He just inhaled slowly through his nose.
"That's new," he said.
Nyra exhaled. The smoke tasted wrong. Too sharp. Too loaded.
"It's not," she replied. "That's the problem."
Silence settled between them, thick but not hostile. Somewhere below, a siren wailed and died. The world kept moving, oblivious.
"You didn't smell like this earlier," Elias said carefully.
Her jaw tightened.
"So you noticed before I did."
"Yes."
She took another drag, slower this time. Deliberate. A choice now, not a slip.
"Funny how control works," she muttered. "You lose it quietly before it explodes."
Elias studied her face not the cigarette, not the smoke. Her eyes. The tension sitting just beneath her calm.
"This isn't about Shark," he said.
"No."
"And it's not about work."
"No."
He hesitated. Then: "Is it about him?"
Nyra didn't answer.
She crushed the cigarette out against the railing with more force than necessary, the ember dying in protest. Smoke lingered anyway clinging, stubborn.
"Don't do that," she said softly.
"Do what?"
"Reduce it to one man."
Elias nodded. "Fair."
But he didn't look convinced.
Across the city, in an office that never truly slept, Adrian stared at a screen filled with movement logs, timestamps, security feeds he had no business accessing.
Nyra hadn't replied to his message.
She hadn't needed to.
The cigarette had done it for her.
Adrian leaned back in his chair, jaw tight, pulse steady but heavy. This wasn't obsession, he told himself. It was pattern recognition. Behavioral relapse. Cause and effect.
She was slipping.
And he knew exactly how to position himself when she did.
Back on the balcony, Nyra wrapped her arms around herself not cold, not weak. Just… aware.
Square one had never felt this familiar.
And that scared her more than the gunshot ever had.