E L A R A

The resort is different at night.

By day, Isla Seraphine gleams like a jewel, lanterns swaying, champagne poured in endless streams, boardwalks polished until they blind. But past midnight, when the last guests stumble into suites and the music cuts out, silence takes over. The orchids wilt in their vases, shadows stretch long and skeletal, and every creak of the building sounds like a warning.

That’s when Ethan Kane calls me in.

The operations office is buried in the back wing of the resort, far from the glossy lobby and the cameras. It smells of printer ink and disinfectant, the hum of the fluorescent lights constant in the empty corridor. When I push the door open, I find him already waiting, a desk lamp the only glow in the room.

He doesn’t look up at first. Just flips a page in the logbook, jaw tight, forearms braced on either side of the papers. His shirt sleeves are rolled high, exposing corded muscle and a scattering of pale scars that make me wonder which wars left them behind.

“Doctor.” His voice is low, steady, the same tone he uses during drills when panic threatens to crack open the staff.

“Security Chief,” I answer, softer than I mean to.

His eyes flick up, sharp and assessing. Then he gestures to the chair across from him. “Ready?”

I drop into the seat, the exhaustion in my body dragging me down like lead weights. But my mind is sharp, keyed by caffeine and fury. “Let’s find out who’s starving my clinic.”

For the first hour, it feels almost routine. He reads the keycard access logs while I line them against the invoices and supply lists. Our pens scratch in counterpoint, two rhythms woven together. The lamp throws sharp shadows across his face, making the edges of him sharper, more dangerous.

It should feel clinical, professional. But every time our hands brush when we reach for the same page, heat sparks up my arm like static. And the way he leans close, steady and unhurried, makes the room feel smaller than it is.

Once, his hand slides over mine entirely, warm and firm. I should pull back. I don’t.

Neither does he.

The silence between us stretches, no longer the comfortable kind. My breath stumbles. I glance up and find him already watching me.

It isn’t hunger I see in his gaze. Not like Adrian’s heat that scorches and commands. Ethan’s eyes hold something quieter, steadier, like an anchor dropped in storm water. A look that says he would stand, unshaken, if the whole island crumbled around us.

My lips part. My body leans. God help me, I lean..

A buzz cuts through the air. Sharp.

We both freeze. His phone lights up on the desk, screen flashing with a message.

Adrian: Audit update?

The spell shatters. Ethan exhales, slow and quiet, before he picks up the phone and types a reply. I force my eyes back to the spreadsheets, my cheeks burning like I’d nearly done something unforgivable.

I remind myself who I am. Who I swore I’d never be again. A woman distracted by proximity, by a man’s steadiness, by the false safety of broad shoulders. Nathan taught me what that mistake costs.

“Doctor.” Ethan’s voice returns, calm and professional, as though nothing passed between us. He slides a page closer. “Look here.”

At first, the numbers blur together. Lines of dates and signatures swim before my eyes. Then the pattern sharpens, ugly in its precision.

Shipments logged twice under different arrival times. Delivery signatures that don’t match the staff who were scheduled. Crates checked in with one barcode and checked out later with another. Expiration dates swapped, extended on paper but shortened in reality.

A sleight of hand. Invisible, until you stack the logs side by side.

“Someone’s covering their tracks,” I whisper, circling the line with my pen. The ink bites into the paper, heavy enough to tear. “This isn’t sloppy bookkeeping. It’s deliberate.”

Ethan leans in, his shoulder brushing mine again, though this time neither of us reacts. His jaw is stone. “Inside access. Nobody on the outside knows these systems well.”

The words send a chill crawling down my spine. Inside access. Someone who walks these halls every day. Someone who smiles at guests, who waves to staff, who passes unnoticed.

I flip another page with shaking hands. More duplications. More contradictions. Whoever is doing this has been at it for months. Slowly draining us, just enough that nobody noticed. Waiting until the worst possible time.

“Lantern Tide,” I murmured. The words taste like ash. “They waited until the festival. When the island is packed and the risk is highest. When supplies matter most.”

Ethan’s gaze darkens. “Which means sabotage. And if they time it right, people die.”

The silence that follows isn’t the charged kind anymore. It’s heavier. Colder. The silence of war declared.

The office feels colder after that. The air conditioning hums overhead, but it’s something else that prickles my skin, the realization that sabotage isn’t a shadow anymore. It has a face, a name, a swipe in the log at two in the morning.

I rub my temple, fighting the ache pressing behind my eyes. “If supplies go missing during Lantern Tide, we won’t have enough for a mass casualty event. Not even close.”

Ethan closes the logbook with a snap that makes me flinch. “Then we don’t let it get that far.”

His certainty should soothe me. Instead, it grates, because certainty is what Nathan used to wear like a mask. But Ethan isn’t Nathan. He doesn’t posture. He doesn’t throw arrogance like a weapon. He speaks like every word is a plan he’ll execute.

Still, I hear the rasp of my own voice, sharper than intended. “Do you even understand what this means? Someone we work with, someone we trust has been stealing life out from under us.”

His gaze meets mine, steady, unflinching. “I understand better than you think.”

I want to ask what he means, what ghosts follow him into these midnight audits. But the weight of the logs drags me back. I flip another page, my pen skidding across columns, circling anomalies, jotting furious notes. The paper is filled with evidence, but no answers.

“It’s like stitching a wound in the dark,” I mutter. “We can’t see how deep it goes until someone bleeds out.”

“Then we shine more light.” Ethan reaches across the desk, sliding one of the sheets closer to him. His fingers brush mine again, not accidental this time. A reminder. Grounding. “Doctor, whoever’s doing this, they want you rattled. Don’t give them that power.”

My laugh is short, bitter. “You think I’m rattled?”

His mouth tilts, almost a smile. “I think you’re furious. And that’s better. Fury fights.”

The words settle somewhere I don’t want them to. He’s right. Fury is what keeps my hands steady when everything else shakes. Fury is what drove me here, what made me tape my safety list to the cabinet like scripture.

But under it, rattling is exactly what I am. Because fury can’t protect patients if the medicine is gone before I even open the cabinet.

I push back from the desk, pacing the narrow office, the soles of my sneakers squeaking on tile. Every shadow in the hallway outside feels suspicious now. Every staff badge I passed earlier flickers in memory. Asha’s tired smile, the interns giggling over cafeteria coffee, the janitor humming as he mopped. Any one of them could be the thief.

Or worse, the saboteur.

My chest tightens. “How do we keep working with people when we don’t know who we can trust?”

Ethan doesn’t answer right away. He rises, slow and deliberate, until he’s close enough that his shadow brushes mine. “You trust me.”

It isn’t a question.

The words hang heavy between us, dangerous in their simplicity. And for one terrifying heartbeat, I almost said yes.

But before I can answer, the tablet pings. A fresh log entry. A line that shouldn’t exist.

I freeze.

The name on the keycard glows back at me, unmistakable.

“It’s one of our own,” I whisper.