Chapter 6 6

Caelum's POV

The file lay on my desk like an indictment. Thin. Too thin. An entire life distilled to a few pages that taught me practically nothing.

Celine Moretti. Twenty years old. English Literature major. GPA of 3.8. Middle class family. At twelve, father dead. Mother married two years later to some accountant in the suburbs. No criminal record. No suspicious activities. Clean as fresh snow.

I didn't believe in clean.

Everyone had secrets. Everyone had something so deep, they were sure no one would find it. And I always found it.

Kent was on my side, arms crossed with a carefully blank expression. He knew not to talk before I did.

"This is everything?" I asked, my voice flat.

"Everything public," he confirmed. “Birth certificate, school records, social media.” The girl's boring, boss. No red flags."

I flipped back through the pages and stopped at her student ID photo. She looked younger here, softer. Hair pulled back, no makeup, a faint smile that didn’t come close to reaching her eyes. Not at all like the brazen, frustrating creature that had marched into my classroom three days earlier.

And nothing like Isabelle.

Except for everything.

“I want more,” I whispered. "Friends, finances, ex boyfriends. Where she goes, whom she talks to, what she has for breakfast. Everything."

Kent raised an eyebrow. “It’s a lot of resources for one college student.”

I looked at him. He looked away first.

“It will be ready tomorrow,” he grumbled, and started toward the door.

"Kent."

He stopped with one hand on the doorknob.

"Don't let her know that she's being followed"

.

He nodded and vanished, leaving me alone with the file and my own personal ghost for the past decade.

I slid open the bottom drawer of my desk, the compartment I always locked, that only I had a key to. Enclosed within, draped in black velvet, was a photograph.

Isabelle.

She looked at me from the other side of time, caught forever at twenty eight. Jet-black hair flowing over her shoulders . The warmth of her brown eyes full of life and laughter. She’d been beautiful the way quiet things were beautiful, like a subtle grace that snuck up on you until one day you couldn’t imagine life without it.

And then the world claimed her anyway.

I placed it on my desk next to Celine’s file and compared the two side by side. Different hair color. Different eye color. Another bone structure if you really looked.

But the tilt of the head. The curve of the smile. The manner in which they both stared at the camera, as if daring it to not look past the surface of things.

Identical.

My chest tightened. Ten years since the accident. A decade since I’d cradled Isabelle’s shattered body and vowed to her that I would raze the world for what they had done. Ten years had passed since I vanished into academia, became the thing she valued because I could no longer be the man she loved.

She’d drag me to guest lectures, whenever she heard about some professor lecturing on astronomy or philosophy her eyes would light up. "Isn't it beautiful?" she'd whisper. "The way they see the world?"

So I learned to see the world like that. Transformed into Professor Caelum Reed: theoretical physicist of serenity and detachment. It’s the fake mustache for the monster underneath.

And now Celine Moretti had come into my life wearing Isabelle’s face.

Coincidence? I didn’t believe those either.

Someone was playing a game. Someone had wanted me distracted, compromised, vulnerable. The question was who.

My phone buzzed. A note for my afternoon talk. I replaced the picture, locked the drawer and rose to my feet.

Now it was time to pretend that I was human again.

---

There was less in the lecture hall today. Too many eyes, too much noise, too much heat on feebly protected skin. I dropped my bag with a controlled precision, and started to write on the board in angular lines.

“Gravity waves,” I answered without looking around. “Who can explain to me why they are important?”

Silence. The obligatory pause before someone brave, or stupid, volunteered.

“I'm gonna bite, and there's nothing in the world stopping me." I closed my eyes; turned, taking a good look around the room this time. They sat in their individual seats, open laptop and all, ready to soak up anything I would choose to throw down.

And there three rows back was Celine.

Today she had a plain gray sweater on. No red lipstick, no tight skirt, no seduction by the numbers. Few strands of her hair were falling off from the messy bun caressing the side of her face. She looked tired. Young. Real.

Something in my chest twisted.

Our eyes met across the room. In that moment, everything else disappeared. The children, and the lecture, and the painstaking walls that I had constructed around myself.

She smiled.

Not the teasing, daring smile from earlier. This was different. Genuine. A little shy. As though she was looking at me as a human being and not a target.

It terrified me.

My jaw was the first to turn away, grinding. “Gravitational waves,” I said again, uncomfortably self-righteous in tone. They’re ripples in the shape of space itself, produced by massive cosmic goings-on. Collisions of black holes, mergers of neutron stars. Einstein anticipated them a century ago, yet we found them only in 2015.”

I began lecturing, all measured and controlled. But I felt her watching me. Felt the pressure of her gaze like a hand.

I'd faced down rival Dons. Tortured men for information. Killed without hesitation when necessary. Except this one college student in a gray sweater was turning me inside out, thread by exposed thread.

The lecture ended. Students streamed out, talking about assignments and weekend plans. Celine stayed behind to arrange her notes with undue attention.

I knew what she was doing. Waiting for everyone to leave. Hoping for another moment alone.

I should have left first. I should have ducked out before she could begin to speak, since the distance between us had served us all so well.

Instead, I stayed.

She was tentative as she made her way to my desk. "Professor Reed?"

"Miss Moretti." My voice was rougher than I meant it to be.

"I wanted to thank you again. For last night."

"I told you not to thank me."

“I understand, but —” She stopped and bit her lip. The gesture was unconscious, innocent. It made her impossibly young. "Why did you help me?"

“Because you look like her. Because I can’t do history again. Since whatever inside of me shattered once I noticed that guy put his hands on you."

“Because you’re my student,” I explained in its place. “I am responsible for your safety. ”

Disappointment flickered across her face. "Right. Of course."

She started walking away and I should have fought to be on the winning side. I should have kept that cold distance that separated my world from hers.

"Celine."

She turned, and her dark eyes, which saw too much, touched mine.

“I don’t ever want to see you in a spot like that again.”

"You said that already," she answered, meekly.

"I meant it."

Something passed between us. Understanding, maybe. Or recognition. The recognition that we both were pretending, both veiling ourselves, both engaged in a game neither of us ultimately charted.

She left without another word.

I continued to stay behind in the empty lecture hall after she had left and fully tensed my wearied hands upon the edge of my desk till both of its ends turned pale. Control. I had built an empire on control. On shrewd moves and careful calculation. That I never ever let emotions overshadow logic.

But Celine Moretti was chaos in soft skin and genuine smiles. And chaos was the only thing I hadn’t been able to foresee.

My phone rang. Ryker’s name lit up on the screen.

"What?" I answered, my voice sharp.

"We have a problem." His tone was grim. "Nikolai knows about the girl. He thinks you're compromised."

The world tilted slightly. "How?"

"Someone sent him photos. You and her, in front of the club last night. They say you’re getting sloppy, that your mind is elsewhere.” That you are doing the thinking with something other than your brain.”

I shut my eyes, fury and fear battling in my chest. Nikolai. My first enemy, the one man who would love nothing more than to watch me burn.

"Where is he now?"

"Berlin. But he's sending people. They will be in town by tomorrow.”

My mind was processing, manipulating odds and possibilities. If he felt I was dirty, Nikolai would check. Push until he discovered the vulnerability, then take advantage of it without pity.

And Celine had become that weakness, aware of it or not.

"Back two on the girl," I commanded. "I want her watched twenty-four hours. If someone even jaywalks too close to her, I want to hear about it.”

"Boss, if she finds out—"

"She won't." I looked up to see the empty lecture hall. "And Ryker? See who sent those images to Nikolai. Someone's playing both sides."

I had enough and hung up before removing my burner phone, the one I used for things that were untraceable. I’d texted Celine anonymously the night before with that as a warning. A way to keep her scared and cautious without letting her know I was nearby.

But now I’d seen just how wrong that was.

In a misguided effort to keep her safe, I’d put us both in danger.