Page 54 of Fractured Allegiance
The sound of my own heartbeat is the only thing loud enough to measure time by.
Then I knock. Once.
The knock is soft, maybe too soft to wake someone. Maybe just loud enough for someone like her, who never really sleeps.
I step back.
I don’t expect her to answer. I don’t know what I’ll say if she does.
But I wait.
Twenty, maybe thirty seconds pass.
Then I hear it.
Locks sliding back.
The deadbolt turns.
And the door opens two inches.
Lydia peers through the crack, her face a mask of calm focus, no hint of fear or doubt, only the careful measure of calculation. The kind that says: I’ve already decided what you mean to me, now let’s see if you prove me wrong.
Her voice is quiet but not uncertain. “Is this about Drazen?”
“No.”
Her fingers tighten on the edge of the door.
“Do you need something?” she asks, like the answer could tip either way.
“I don’t know,” I say.
She holds the door there, half-open, half-closed. The hallway light cuts across her bare shoulder, the robe slipping down just enough to show a collarbone etched with tension. But she doesn’t adjust it. She doesn’t retreat.
Her voice softens, barely. “You came to stand on my doorstep at six in the morning and you don’t know why?”
“No,” I say again, honest now. “But I can’t stop thinking about what would happen if I didn’t.”
That gets her.
A pause. A shift. Her eyes narrow, but not in warning.
In... consideration.
Then she opens the door another few inches. Enough to let the moment breathe, not enough to let me in.
“I don’t let people in,” she says.
“I’m not asking to come in.”
We’re standing there, inches apart, and it feels like a negotiation without terms.
She studies me. Long enough that the hush goes from awkward to electric.
Then she steps back once, barely clearing the doorway.
“I didn’t say I’d talk,” she says.
