The storm had passed, but the skies outside still murmured with lightning's memory.
Low thunder rolled like a slumbering beast beyond the windowpanes. Pale curtains swayed gently with the wind that slipped through barely-cracked glass, cool and scented with distant eucalyptus, ocean salt, and rain-drenched asphalt. Somewhere far below the estate's private wing, the city hummed with its late-night chaos — distant sirens, splashing tires, a saxophone solo echoing from a rooftop bar across the hills.
But in this room, silence reigned like velvet.
A fire whispered in the hearth — low flames, orange and blue, casting long shadows across polished obsidian floors and high walls streaked with marble veins. The bed was a massive thing — circular, sunken into the floor like a secret haven, buried in silk and midnight linens.
Here, in this warm hollow carved into the world's cold edge, Parker lay with one arm around the woman who had once tried to betray him… and who now carried his child.