Jadon
The penthouse felt like a tomb.
It was 4:00 AM. Jadon had sat in the dark for three hours, staring at the distant lights of the city below. He had not slept.
He had come here seeking silence, but the quiet he found was deafening and oppressive. It magnified the image of Chloe's face, laughing on his yacht, and projected it onto the dark glass walls. It echoed imagined, frantic voicemails from his family and from his board.
The black hole inside him wasn't a lack of feeling; it was a heavy mix of rage, betrayal, and a profound emptiness that made him feel like he was rattling inside his own skin.
He couldn't stay here. He couldn't pace this beautiful, silent cage.
He was a ghost. He needed... other ghosts. He wanted to be invisible, but not alone. He needed to be surrounded by so much life that it would drown out the noise in his mind.
He knew the place.
He pulled on the clothes he kept here, ones that felt like they belonged to no one: worn, dark jeans, scuffed boots, and a simple, charcoal-grey hoodie. He grabbed a faded baseball cap from the closet to hide his face.
He took the private elevator to the vault, slid into the anonymous Range Rover, and disappeared into the pre-dawn city.
At 5:30 AM, New Smithfield Market was its own small, bustling city.
It was glorious. A chaotic, vibrant world that his sterile penthouse couldn't imitate. The air was cold, biting at his exposed cheeks, but it was alive. It smelled of wet pavement, diesel fumes, sawdust, and a thousand different foods.
He kept the brim of his cap low and his hands shoved deep into his hoodie pockets. He was just a shadow among shadows, another face in the early morning rush. This was what he wanted. The noise of forklifts beeping, the rhythmic thwack of butchers' cleavers, the lively haggling of vendors—it was a perfect cacophony, loud enough to drown out the silence in his mind.
He bypassed the meat and fish halls, skipped over the acres of fruit and vegetables, and instinctively drifted to the section he knew best.
The spice hall.
It was warmer here, the air thick with fragrance. It was his world, his empire, in its rawest form. It was a universe of scent: the sweet, dusty perfume of turmeric, the sharp bite of ginger, the smoky allure of paprika, and the warm, woody embrace of cinnamon.
He watched, unnoticed, as restaurant and deli owners argued over the price of peppercorns and as chefs inspected saffron threads with pocket loupes. This was the front line. This was real.
He was so absorbed in watching, in the comfort of his own expertise, that he didn't see the small, fast-moving figure approaching until it was too late.
One moment he was still; the next, he collided hard with someone.
It was a solid impact. A woman, pulled along by a larger, energetic older woman, stumbled and slammed into his chest.
"Oof—sorry, I'm so—"
"Excuse me," he said, his voice a low, automatic rumble.
His hands shot out, acting on instinct, grabbing her arms to steady her before she fell.
And time paused.
He hadn't meant to look. He was a ghost. He didn't look.
But he was holding her, and his gaze locked onto hers.
He expected to see... nothing. Another anonymous face. Instead, he found a pair of the most extraordinary eyes he had ever seen. They were a deep, warm hazel, but in the market's low light, they looked like clear amber. They were wide with surprise, exhaustion, and... something else.
He recognized it.
It was the same deep, haunted weariness he had seen in his own mirror for the last 48 hours. It was the look of someone who had been holding the world up and had just... dropped it.
She wasn't the grey, haunted woman her aunt had described. This was Talia after twelve hours of deep, uninterrupted sleep. The "haunted" look was there, but it was soft, groggy, and disoriented. Her dark, curly hair was a mess, pulled into a knot, and her cheeks were flushed from the cold.
She was, he realized with a jolt, beautiful. Not in the polished, glossy way of Chloe, but in a real, textured, breathing way.
"Talia! Yalla!" a loud, heavily-accented voice boomed.
The moment shattered. The older woman—vibrant, wrapped in scarves, radiating enough energy to power the entire market—grabbed Talia's arm. "You've got to move faster, bubbeleh, or all the good sumac is gone! Excuse him," she said to Jadon, but not at him, already pulling Talia away.
"Sorry," Talia murmured again, her amber eyes flicking over his face—taking in the shadow of his beard, the brim of his cap—before she was yanked back into her aunt's pull.
Jadon's hands fell to his sides. He didn't move.
He just... watched.
He watched her, a small, quiet boat in the wake of a battleship, being steered through the crowd. He noticed how she tucked a loose curl behind her ear, a gesture of quiet confidence. He saw the older woman—her mother, he assumed—cupping her cheek and saying something that made her smile. A small, tired, yet genuine smile.
He kept his feet planted on the concrete floor, a solid presence in the stream of market-goers. He kept turning his head, following her.
He saw her stop at a stall piled high with burlap sacks of spices. He watched as she dipped her hand into a barrel of cumin, rubbing the seeds between her fingers, then lifting them to her nose, her eyes closing in a brief, instinctive moment of pure, professional assessment.
She wasn't a tourist. She knew.
Jadon felt a strange, unexplainable pull. It was an anomaly. An irritation. He had come here to feel nothing, to be invisible. But he just collided with someone who felt, in that one brief, silent moment, incredibly real.
The older woman paid for a bag, and they began to move again, heading for the exit.
Jadon found himself taking a step as if to follow.
He stopped. What are you doing?
He stood there, a 29-year-old billionaire in a cheap hoodie, and watched her walk away. He kept turning, his gaze fixed on her back, until she and the vibrant woman she was with vanished into the crowd, disappearing into the bright, cold morning light.
He lingered for a long time, the scent of spices in the air now tangled with the memory of her eyes. He felt annoyed. He felt unsettled. The black hole in his chest felt... different.
It felt like it had a splinter in it. And he could not shake her face from his mind.