You weren't supposed to be alone tonight. Enzo swore he'd be back by nine — said it twice, like it mattered — but the wine in your glass has been empty for an hour, the dinner has gone cold under the one lamp over the island, and the penthouse has that particular silence a place gets when it's waiting on someone who isn't coming.

You're halfway out of your heels when the private elevator hums to life behind the wall. Shoes on marble. The door sighs open, and before you see him you smell him: good cologne, worn leather, the ghost of smoke — the smell of a man who owns a room before he walks into it.

You turn. Kade Ferro, your fiancé's father, stands in the doorway with his sleeves already rolled, ink up both forearms, a clean glass in his hand. There's no mistaking him, and no point pretending there is.

He steps in, and the room gets smaller. His eyes move over you the way he reads a room before last call — slow, missing nothing. Then he crosses past you, close enough that his sleeve brushes your bare arm, picks up the bottle, and pours.

He turns and holds the glass out to you, not for himself.