Roman’s bedroom door shut with a muted thud that seemed to echo longer than it should.

Down the hall, Magnus’s eyes sharpened. He stepped out from the shadows where he had been standing, watching, his gaze lingering on the closed door for a second before he turned away.

The corridor was quiet, the soft glow of the wall lights casting long, clean lines across the floor as he made his way back toward his study.

Once inside, he didn’t sit. He pulled out his phone and dialed, pressing it to his ear as he began to pace. The faint rustle of his clothes and the low creak of the floor followed his steps. His jaw was tight, his thoughts moving faster than his feet.

The line rang once, twice, and then it connected.

"Tell me you already have everything under control," Magnus said. His voice was calm, but the urgency beneath it cut through cleanly.

A pause answered him, and in that brief silence, faint noise filtered through the line, voices, movement, something unsettled.

Then Vance spoke. "We have a problem here, sir. There is—"

"I don’t want excuses, Vance!" Magnus snapped, his voice slicing through the call. He stopped pacing, his fingers tightening around the phone. "Give me solutions. Do what is necessary. I don’t care what it takes! Drag them out of there if you have to. Just fix it."

He ended the call with a sharp tap before Vance could respond.

For a second, the room fell still. Then Magnus let out a scoff and tossed the phone onto the desk. It landed with a dull clatter, sliding slightly across the polished surface.

"I can’t let this get out," he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. "No one can find out I had anything to do with this."

He pushed back from the desk and rose fully, tension snapping through him. He began pacing again, faster now, each turn sharper than the last, his mind spiraling through contingencies, damage control, outcomes.

Waiting. For the phone to ring again. For Vance to fix it.

He stopped mid-step, jaw tightening. This wasn’t just damage control anymore. Roman wasn’t reacting. He was starting to move.

—

Upstairs, Roman stood just inside his room, the quiet pressing in around him. He didn’t move at first. His brows were drawn tight, his thoughts colliding, refusing to settle. The faint hum of the air conditioner filled the silence, but it did nothing to slow the storm in his head.

He exhaled and lifted a hand, pinching the bridge of his jaw as he paced once across the room. "I need to know what he’s planning," he murmured under his breath. "Where did Vance go?"

He stopped near the door, his hand hovering just above the handle. "I can’t just sit here."

His fingers curled slightly, then he stopped. If he stepped out now, Magnus would know, and everything would unravel too soon. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Roman glanced at his watch, the seconds ticking forward with quiet insistence. He drew in a slow breath, forcing himself to think past the impulse.

"I wait," he said finally, more firmly now, stepping back from the door, tension still coiled in his shoulders.

The room fell silent again, but this time, it wasn’t empty. It was loaded.

He moved to the bed and sat down, the mattress dipping beneath his weight. His foot kept tapping against the floor, restless, insistent, betraying the tension he couldn’t quite shake. He had decided to wait, but his body clearly hadn’t agreed.

With a quiet exhale, he unlocked his phone.

The evidence was still there. Safe. Backed up, locked away in the cloud where no one else could touch it. For a moment, that steadied him.

He scrolled. Clips from his live session flooded the screen: reposts, headlines, reactions. His face. Leo’s face. The confrontation. All of it looping in short, relentless bursts.

Roman leaned back slowly, the sheets cool against his skin as the mattress sank further under him. He let the phone slip from his hand, landing softly beside him. Then he closed his eyes and for a moment, the noise faded.

The comments. The anger. The pressure. Gone.

His mind drifted away from the chaos, away from the suffocating weight of everything, and settled somewhere quieter. Estelle. On that night before everything fell apart.

He lay back, the phone slipping from his hand. Just for a minute. Just to think.

The silence stretched. And somewhere between one breath and the next, it took him under.

—

A sound pulled him back. Faint at first, birds. It blended with the tail end of his thoughts, almost dreamlike, until warmth brushed against his eyelids. Sunlight filtered through the curtains, soft but persistent.

Roman’s eyes opened, then widened. He shot upright, the sudden movement making the bed creak beneath him. His gaze snapped to his wristwatch, and his breath hitched.

"It’s morning?!" he muttered, disbelief creeping in. "How? I just closed my eyes." He was already on his feet, heart picking up speed. "Damn it!"

His hands moved quickly, tossing aside pillows, dragging at the sheets. "Where is it?" His voice came sharper now, edged with something close to panic.

He couldn’t lose that phone. Not now. Not when it was everything.

The blanket shifted, and there it was.

Roman froze for half a second, then exhaled sharply, relief loosening his chest. It wasn’t where he had left it, but it was there and for that moment, it was enough.

He grabbed it, his fingers moving fast as he unlocked the screen. Notifications flooded in, messages, missed alerts, emails stacked on top of each other from news outlets, dozens of them.

His pulse ticked up as he opened one, then another, and suddenly, his breath caught.

"No, that’s not—" The words slipped out before he could stop them.

His eyes scanned the screen, widening with each line. "They escaped?" he said aloud, disbelief turning sharp. "How?!"

He refreshed the page, then another, searching, piecing things together. "The police didn’t find them? How does that even—" He stopped mid-thought.

His head lifted slowly. "Vance." The name settled heavily. "That’s why he left."

Roman didn’t hesitate. He grabbed a T-shirt and pulled it over his head in one swift motion, barely straightening it as he moved. Phone in hand, he turned toward the door and paused as another notification slid across the screen.

His eyes flicked to it. Roman Whitehall is accused of inciting a mob attack at the Saunders residence.

He scoffed under his breath, shaking his head once. "Nice try." His grip tightened around the phone. "Let’s see how that holds when I release what I have."

But even as he said it, something unsettled pressed at the edges of his thoughts.

While he had slept, the world hadn’t. It had moved. And someone had moved faster than him.

Roman stilled for a brief moment, the weight of that realization settling in. Then his jaw hardened.

Fine. If the fire had grown, he would walk straight into it. Because one question now burned louder than the rest: What exactly happened while he was asleep?