Ahead of him stretched a part of the city Adrien Cole had spent most of his life avoiding.
And somewhere inside it was the woman who had disappeared before the world could even learn her name.
By late afternoon, the city had changed its face.
The polished towers and crowded business streets were gone, replaced by rusted fences, broken sidewalks, and old buildings that looked as though they had been forgotten one brick at a time.
Rain had begun to fall in a thin, steady curtain, turning the roads dark and making the air smell of metal and wet dust.
Adrien stood beside his car and looked down the narrow street ahead.
“This is where she was last seen,” his security chief said.
Adrien barely nodded.
He had come too far to turn back now.
Ignoring the umbrella one of his men tried to hand him, he walked forward into the rain.
Water soaked his hair and slid down the collar of his coat, but he kept going, passing shuttered shops, crumbling walls, and doorways where tired faces quickly looked away.
Every few steps he scanned the street, searching for the woman from the bridge—the woman who had appeared out of nowhere and vanished just as fast.
Then, near the side of an abandoned building, he saw her.
She was standing beneath a broken awning that offered almost no protection from the rain. Her clothes were damp. Her shoulders were slightly bent. One hand was pressed low against her stomach, as if she were trying to hold herself together through sheer will.
She looked even thinner than she had in the videos.
For a moment, Adrien stopped walking.
Not because he was unsure.
Because the sight of her hit harder than he expected.
This was the woman who had saved his life.
And this—this was how she was living.
“Mara,” he said carefully.
She turned at the sound of a stranger speaking her name. Her eyes met his, tired and guarded.
For a second, she looked confused, as if trying to place a face she had never really seen clearly before. On the bridge, he had been hanging over death. Here, standing in front of her, he was just a man in an expensive coat with rain on his face.
Then recognition flickered.
Her brows drew together.
“You,” she said softly.
Adrien stepped closer, but slowly, so he would not frighten her.
“Yes.”
For a few seconds, the rain filled the silence between them.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said.
Mara gave a weak, almost bitter laugh.
“Why?”
The word caught him off guard.
“Why?” Adrien repeated.
“You’re alive,” she said. “That’s enough, isn’t it?”
Her voice was not rude.
It was worse.
It was tired.
Adrien looked at her carefully.
