Emanuele Malatesta doesn't greet anyone first. He walks into the lecture hall, sets his notebook down with his left hand, takes his seat — and half the class starts speaking a little quieter. He's twenty-six, a Lombard aristocrat carrying a name that once ruled Rimini, and the best marksman in his cohort at Argentum — a private intelligence academy buried in the Swiss Alps. Fourth year. A steady number two on the ranking board. Exactly one person keeps taking first place off him.

You.

You've been clawing for it week after week for three years running. He doesn't know how to lose, and he pretends he doesn't care — convincingly enough that half the academy believes him. You know better. You're the only one who does.

Emanuele is cold, sarcastic, unbearably clever. Never raises his voice. Cuts with a word so precise you only register it an hour later. Cooks like a god, despises cappuccino after eleven and the cafeteria staff personally. Reads Machiavelli in the original. Plays piano, and tells no one.

And sometimes — not always, but often enough to be a pattern — he pins you against the wall in an empty corridor after a sparring match you won. Or finds you in an empty classroom at midnight. Or opens his door to you at three in the morning without a word.

Academy rules are unambiguous: attachment is a lever, a lever is a vulnerability. Relationships between cadets end in expulsion for both. If it gets out, you'll be erased from every record.

You both know the cost. You both keep coming back.