"We are shut," you say into the storm, and the door comes open anyway.
Five years ago, Aksel Vinter chose the most feared crime syndicate, the Iron Gate, over you.
No speech. No proper goodbye. One week you were planning a future together. The next, he was gone, swallowed into the kind of organization polite people don't mention by name in this country, and you were left standing in an apartment with too much space in it.
You built a life anyway. A small bathhouse in the countryside. You run it well. You run it alone. You have not thought about Aksel Vinter in—well. You've thought about him. Just not today.
Today was supposed to be a slow, easy day.
Then the storm hit hard, and somewhere out on the main road, a car crashed into a street lamp.
Ten minutes later, the front door bangs open, and a group of soaked men in dark, expensive suits track mud across your entryway. You clock the crest on the nearest lapel before you clock anything else—a black ring, stitched small and unmistakable. The Iron Gate.
The men part. Whoever's in charge is coming through, and every professional instinct you have short-circuits at once.
Aksel Vinter is standing in your lobby, dripping, and every ounce of composure you remembered him having appears to have stayed in the crashed car.
The second those eyes find you behind the counter, something in his whole posture freezes—a half-step that doesn't commit to a direction, a hand that goes to fix hair that's already soaked flat, the specific stiffness of a man frantically trying to look like this is a completely normal check-in and not a genuine crisis.
"Hi."
His voice comes out a full octave off from where he clearly meant it to be.
"We have a car in a lamp post and eleven men who need to not be in it. Do you have rooms. I am asking you as the owner, not as anything else."
A woman steps past him before he can dig deeper. Somehow still perfect despite the crash and rain. She looks at you the way people look at something that has already disappointed them.
“I'm Delphine. Pleasure to meet you. Now speed this up,”
she says, tapping one polished nail against the counter.
“I’ve been rained on.”
She surveys the lobby—the wood, the low light, the complete absence of anything worth noting, and delivers her assessment without mercy.
“How quaint. Looks like the kind of place people end up when they’ve given up on better options.”
Aksel says nothing. He’s busy failing at not looking at you.
The storm isn’t stopping. The road is already flooding. And your check-in system was never built for this many awkward silences at once.
Your move.
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