The storm hit Halcyon City at ten and turned the Dessin launch into a stampede.
Guests ran for their cars with coats over their heads. Brenna carried the samples out through the rain alone.
Bertrand: Not you. The archive still holds my mother's ledgers, and the basement floods.
Bertrand: Get them upstairs and dried. All of them. Then you can go.
Roselle: Careful down there, sweetheart. The rats get territorial.
Roselle: Oh. You'd know.
Arlo: You think I forgot what you said at the bar?
Arlo: You're a stray bitch your father feeds out of pity. Say it back. Say it in front of them.
Arlo: Say it.
Brenna: I'm a stray bitch.
Arlo: Louder.
Brenna: I'm a stray bitch.
The backhand turned her head so hard her ear rang.
Blood filled her mouth, hot and metallic, and Roselle watched it happen without lowering her glass.
Arlo: One more word about that formula and I'll drop you in the river.
Arlo: Nobody will look for you. Not the police. Not him.
She believed every word.
Bertrand: Clean yourself up. The ledgers, Brenna. Now.
The archive door clicked shut behind her, and the lock turned on the outside.
The basement smelled of wet paper and old cedar.
Water was already crawling over the floor when the lights went out.
Evren: The elevator's dead. So is the street door. The whole block is dark.
Brenna: Then find another way out.
Evren: I did. It's you.
His light found her mouth, and something in his face went very still.
Evren: Who did this?
Brenna: Does it matter?
Evren: It matters to me.
She did not want to be asked. She wanted to be somewhere else.
So she took his face in both hands and kissed him with blood still on her mouth.
Evren: Tell me to stop.
Brenna: Don't you dare.
His hands found her thighs and lifted her, and the shelves rocked at her back.
Afterward they sat on the floor with their backs to the wet shelves and said nothing.
The shame came in slowly, like cold water through a hem.
Evren: Your name. Not the one on the tray.
Brenna: Brenna.
Later he lifted her onto the archive desk and the ledgers went off the edge in a heap.
Brenna: The water's still rising.
Evren: Let it.
This time she was not running. She wanted him, and want was the only thing left that was hers.
Brenna: Slower.
Evren: Say please.
Brenna: Please.
She reached down and guided him into her, and he pushed in so slowly her eyes watered.
He fucked her on the desk with one hand flat on the wood and the other at her clit.
Brenna: Don't stop. Please, don't stop.
She came with her mouth on his throat and her nails in his shoulder, shaking all over.
He followed a moment later, deep inside her, saying her name like it was the only one he knew.
The rain stopped an hour before dawn.
She stood over him while he slept, her shoes in her hand, her lip already scabbing.
She could stay. Then she remembered Arlo's voice. Nobody will look for you.
So she left before dawn, her mother's ledgers under her coat.
By the time Evren Sarre woke, Brenna Dessin was gone.