A Kiss For Three

chapter 10

I put the armor back on—the spine of steel, the breath that stayed measured when panic wanted to sprint, the mind that counterpunched instead of flinching. I had trained myself to become a room with no windows—no one saw in, no one saw out. That was who I had to be then.

I started with the number. The unknown sender had burned through a relay of disposable addresses and anonymizers clever enough to make half the internet look like a hall of mirrors. I ran the tree from the top, branching every hop, charting nodes and dead ends across a whiteboard until it looked like a map of a city that didn’t exist.

I called the one person who had, more times than I cared to admit, dragged a fact out of a locked room with his teeth. Daniel.

We met the way we always did when the stakes were ugly—no restaurant, no car, nothing traceable. Just a wind-harsh corner where the city blew cold through the ribs. We wore the uniform of people who didn’t want to be remembered: warm coats, caps low, collars up.

He studied me with the same tired amusement he’d had since the day we learned to trust each other without saying so. I handed him the phone with the images already open, the ladder of anonymized mail showing below it like a dare.

He flipped through, jaw tightening by a millimeter. Then he exhaled smoke that wasn’t there.

“Sorry,” Daniel said, and the word weighed more coming from him than it did from most. “There’s no way to track this one. Too professionally done. Even I can’t help here.”

I didn’t flinch, but the inside of me did. “Everyone leaves a seam,” I said.

“Not everyone. Some people stitch with fire.” He passed the phone back. “You were being handled, Iris. Whoever sent these knew your radius. Knew theirs. Knew when you believed you were invisible.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning they were watching before you noticed. That’s the worst kind.” His eyes lifted to the gray water and then back to me. “You want me to stay on it anyway?”

“I’ll pay twice your usual.”

He winced like I’d insulted him. “You know that’s not why I’m asking.”

I looked away because he was right. It wasn’t the money for him, not when it was me. Still, pride was a habit. “Humor me.”

He hitched a shoulder. “I’ll keep my ears open. But I’m telling you now: if they don’t want to be found, we won’t find them.”

The gull screamed again. I wanted something to break so I didn’t have to. “Fine.”

He watched me tuck the phone away. “You were thinking about calling the boys.”

“They’re not boys,” I said automatically. “And this wasn’t theirs to fix.”

“Maybe not. But secrets rot faster in the dark.” He tugged his cap lower. “Be careful, Iris.”

“Always.”

“Liar,” he said, almost fond, and peeled away into the wind.

I went back to the office and made the room small enough to contain the panic. Hours slid. Coffee cooled and curdled.

I reverse-searched every rooftop angle, squinting at the ripples of glass to see from where the photo could have been taken. I layered a map of lines-of-sight over memory. I triangulated and came up with two likely windows, both in buildings that pretended no one lived there. Property records said shell companies; shell companies said lawyers; lawyers said come back with a subpoena and a badge I didn’t carry.

I rebooted, reset, retried. The results didn’t change. Anxiety settled in my chest like a coin I couldn’t cough up. The room had too little air.

My phone buzzed. Every muscle readied for impact. I flipped it over and found Nico’s name and something light blinking beside it: Meet again tomorrow at the rooftop? :)

I stared at the smiley. The weight behind my ribs shifted—not lighter, just differently balanced. My thumb hovered, indecisive, and in that indecision I felt the worst of my contradictions unspool: I was a woman hired to betray them. I was a woman being blackmailed because I didn’t.

I put the phone down face-first and breathed out hard, like I was trying to fog up the entire room.

Enough. Think. The problem set had three parts: One—someone was watching. Two—Serena and Camille expected blood I hadn’t drawn. Three—I was in the middle where the floor was melting and I kept calling it a dance.

I needed some place where my thoughts knew the way home. So I left the office and crossed two roads, reaching a low building I knew by heart.

I reached the rehearsal studio, half-lit when I pushed through the door, the kind of amber light that had its own hush built in. Dust hung in the beam above the piano like it was listening. I hadn’t brought the violin case. I hadn’t brought anything but the instrument and the ache.

Mr. Levin was already there near the cracked window, playing something lazy that remembered it used to be beautiful—a summer melody walking home through rain.

“Finally found what was messing with your head, Iris?”

I lifted the violin instead of answering because I could hold it steady. He waited while I fit it to the cradle where my jaw knew it belonged. We’d done this before—when the world talked too loudly, when I needed a language without witnesses.

He nodded me in.

We began with scales because that’s how you learn to breathe again: up the spine, down the bones, reminder by reminder that a hand can make order out of air.

“Again,” he said softly when my third finger hesitated on the A. I landed it clean. He heard it and moved us forward, shaping the lazy melody into something that carried us.

“What was it?” he asked once the phrases were living on their own. He always asked in the rests, never on the notes. His tone was almost teasing. “A man?”

I didn’t laugh, but something in me wanted to. “Two,” I almost said. Instead: “Maybe,” I answered, tense.

We switched to minor, then found the same melody tilted by shadow. He closed his eyes; I kept mine open because I didn’t want to make more room for whatever was creeping behind them.

Something strange happens when you play with someone you trust. Your pulse remembers cooperation. Your breath learns to follow theirs around corners. Even the mistakes become kind—tiny collisions you both adjust to without blame.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I didn’t stop. Neither did he. We rode the phrase to the end, traded it back, turned it once, returned it cleaner. For the length of a page, the city stopped insisting on being the city and became only resonance and wood.

“You’re doing better,” Mr. Levin said.

I nodded. I didn’t trust my throat for anything more.

He set his bow down and turned a peg for me. “You can stay as long as you like,” he added, as simple as turning a page. “Lock the door when you leave.”