A Kiss For Three

chapter 14

I opened the door with the best neutral face I could manage. “Camille,” I said smoothly, even though my pulse skipped a beat. “What a surprise.”

“Ms. Lowell.” Her voice was silk over glass—polished, sharp, and impossible to ignore. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

You are.

But I smiled anyway, stepping aside. “Not at all. Come in.”

She glided into my office like she owned it. Every move was precise, calculated. Her perfume lingered—a blend of cold florals with something metallic underneath. I watched her take in the space: the half-empty coffee mug on my desk, the folders stacked in careless order, the faint city light spilling through the blinds.

Adrian and Nico were supposed to be there soon. Ten minutes, maybe less. My stomach knotted. If Camille saw them all together with me, I could forget about my job, my safety—hell, my life.

I gestured to the seat opposite my desk, then took mine, forcing a calm I didn’t feel. “To what do I owe the pleasure of an unannounced visit?”

Camille sat with the poise of a woman who never had to raise her voice to be obeyed. Her eyes studied me with surgical precision.

“I’ve heard some… rumors,” she said finally.

The word rumors made my spine lock. I kept my tone even. “What kind of rumors?”

She tilted her head slightly. “Stories about your past. Stories that don’t quite sit well with me.”

My pulse stuttered, but I leaned back in my chair, pretending boredom. “My past? That’s a wide field. You’ll have to be more specific.”

Camille’s lips curved, not into a smile but into something sharper. “About a detective you married. Some people say you went… rather unprofessional. Falling for a man while on the job. How can I be certain you’ll stay professional this time?”

The air thickened. My fingers twitched around my pen before I set it down.

“If you’ve heard about my marriage,” I replied coolly, “then you’ve also heard why it fell apart. I don’t do unprofessional anymore.”

A lie. A clean, flawless lie.

Camille studied me for what felt like an hour, her gaze steady, dissecting. Then she rose gracefully. “I sincerely hope so.”

Her heels clicked against the floor, sharp, final. She didn’t look back when she left, and that was somehow worse. The door shut and I let out a slow, silent exhale, every nerve trembling.

I’d seen dangerous women before, but Camille Astor might have been in a league of her own. Before I could even process it—before the silence had time to settle—voices echoed in the hallway. Familiar voices.

Adrian’s low laugh. Nico’s teasing hum. I sat upright just as the door swung open and there they were: one holding two boxes of pizza, the other balancing a bag of takeout and a few cans of beer.

Adrian’s grin widened when he spotted me, like he hadn’t just barged into the lion’s den. “Hope you didn’t have dinner plans,” he said, dropping the boxes onto my desk without permission.

“You’re late,” I muttered automatically, masking the panic clawing at me.

“Blame him.” Nico gestured to Adrian, plopping down into the chair Camille had just vacated. “He can’t pick a pizza topping without turning it into a board meeting.”

Adrian shrugged, perching himself on the edge of my desk, legs crossed like he was at home. “Democracy is dead. Pepperoni always wins.”

I sighed, trying not to glance at the door, half-expecting Camille to walk back in. “You two do realize this is an office, right? People usually work here.”

“Then we’ll call this… a working dinner,” the tech magnate said.

The artist spun lazily in the other chair. “Work-life balance, Iris. You should try it sometime.”

“Maybe after you stop raiding my workplace like it’s a frat house,” I shot back.

But I didn’t stop them or kick them out. Instead, I found myself on the leather couch, unbuttoning my blazer, pretending I wasn’t secretly relieved they were there.

“Beer?” Nico offered.

I shook my head. “It tastes like wet cardboard.”

He grinned. “That’s the charm.”

We ate; we talked. Adrian complained about his latest deal—a “total circus,” he called it—with investors acting like toddlers fighting over the last toy. Nico chimed in with his own horror story: “One of my clients—this pompous billionaire with too much Botox—asked me to paint his naked sister. Said it’d be ‘artistic.’ I said, sure, if she wore a bag over her head.”

I choked on my pizza laughing. “You didn’t.”

“I did. He didn’t pay me, but I slept great that night.”

Adrian nearly spilled his beer laughing. “You’re an idiot.”

“I’m a free idiot.”

For the first time in days, I laughed without measuring it, and the sound felt alien and good.

Adrian leaned closer, watching me with that quiet curiosity of his. “You know,” he said, “you look different when you laugh.”

“Worse?” I asked.

“Better,” Nico cut in before Adrian could answer. His tone was softer than usual, genuine. “Less guarded. More… alive.”

I glanced between them, suddenly hyperaware of the warmth under my skin. The space between the three of us felt charged, like the pause before a spark. I met Nico’s stare like it was a contest. Adrian gave him a subtle look that could almost have been jealousy if it hadn’t disappeared so fast.

To cover it, I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t realize I signed up for a therapy session.”

Adrian grinned. “We’re good at multitasking.”

I shoved another slice of pizza into my mouth, pretending not to notice the way his gaze lingered on me—too intimate to be accidental.

“Tell us something,” Nico said suddenly. “Something personal.”

“Like what?”

Adrian leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?”

I chewed, swallowed, and muttered, “Being born.”

They both laughed, exactly like I wanted them to.

“Pessimist,” Nico said, tipping his can toward me. “Then what’s the best thing?”

The question silenced me.

I stared down at the half-eaten slice in my hand, pretending to think of something clever—some career win, some trip, some victory I could wrap in sarcasm. But the truth slipped quietly between my thoughts before I could block it out.

You two.

I didn’t say it aloud. I couldn’t. But it sat there anyway, glowing like an ember.

Nico was still watching me, and Adrian’s smirk had softened into something that felt dangerously close to tenderness.

“I’ll… get back to you on that,” I murmured finally.

“Fair enough,” Adrian said, leaning back with that infuriatingly calm smile. “We’ll hold you to it.”

We kept talking, but the laughter felt different now—warmer, threaded with something else none of us named. For tonight, I let the world outside fall away. I forgot about Camille’s sharp words, about Daniel’s warnings, about the blackmail, about the lies I still owed Serena and Camille.

For tonight, I wasn’t a detective, not a spy, not a woman built from cracks.