After their shower, Sophie left for campus something important she needed to handle. She delivered the explanation with a quick kiss at his door and a promise to message him later.

Once she was gone, Stan found himself with an idle afternoon and a thought that had been lingering in the back of his mind ever since the drive to the gym:

A Lamborghini was not actually a practical daily car.

It drew attention everywhere it went. It had almost no room for anything. And, if he was being honest with himself, it was slightly excessive for routine driving.

So he drove to Imperium Motors and, with casual ease that still felt surreal to him sometimes, bought an Audi S5.

He drove it back to his apartment building and parked it beside the Huracán in his allocated garage space.

"Two cars now," he muttered to himself, shaking his head with a quiet, amused sigh. "That’s genuinely insane."

He stood there for a moment, looking at the pair of them, the matte-black supercar and the sleek, understated Audi, and felt a flicker of simple, uncomplicated satisfaction.

Sometimes the system’s wealth still caught him off guard when he stopped long enough to actually think about it.

’I guess more money really does mean more cars to enjoy,’ he thought.

The line immediately reminded him of the old Spider-Man quote about power and responsibility.

Then he caught himself and laughed quietly. He had somehow managed to butcher one of the most overused movie quotes of all time.

Still, the idea oddly applied to him too.

More money. More cars. More problems he never imagined he’d have to think about.

He spent the rest of the afternoon driving the Audi around Inksea with no destination in mind, no errands, no purpose, just the genuine, low-key enjoyment of a new car and an open road.

The S5 handled beautifully. It was smooth, comfortable, refined.

And best of all, nobody filmed it.

For the first time in a while, Stan realized he could actually exist like a normal person who simply liked cars rather than a walking public spectacle.

---

That evening, Stan took the Huracán to the Imperium Motors service center to have it cleaned and serviced.

The work would take a couple of hours, so rather than wait around the lounge, he checked into a nearby hotel to rest and pass the time while the car was being handled.

He was crossing one of the hotel’s staircase landings when a woman caught his attention.

Her hair was tied up high, exposing sharp almond-shaped eyes and soft rosy lips. Black heels clicked lightly against the polished floor as she leaned against the wall, and even from a distance, without a single word exchanged, she carried the unmistakable bearing of someone cold, distant, and self-contained.

Stan slowed slightly.

He recognized her. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

She had been one of the Warner Bros. shareholders seated at the executive table during the talent show two evenings ago. Which made her presence here genuinely strange. Most of the foreign shareholders had flown into Inksea and Velaris specifically for the event, attended the show, then disappeared back into the insulated world of executives, hotels, and private schedules.

Finding one of them alone in a random hotel a day later felt oddly out of place.

But it wasn’t her presence that held his attention.

It was her condition.

Her eyes were narrowed with strain. Sweat glistened faintly across her forehead. One hand was braced against the wall while her body leaned into it, her balance visibly unstable, the posture of someone struggling to remain upright through sheer effort.

"Are you alright?" Stan asked, keeping his tone calm and non-threatening.

The reaction was immediate.

"Leave me alone."

Her voice cracked sharply.

She flinched away from him with genuine alarm, not the irritated rejection of someone wanting privacy, but the instinctive recoil of a person whose nervous system had already classified him as danger before her mind could process the situation.

Stan paused.

Then he immediately began stepping back.

"Don’t come any closer," she said again, quieter this time, fear threading through the words. "Please... just leave me alone."

Stan frowned slightly.

He hadn’t been moving toward her at all. If anything, he was already backing away.

He lifted one hand in a simple understood, I’m leaving gesture and continued down the hallway toward the restroom. Whatever situation the woman was involved in, inserting himself into it blindly seemed like an excellent way to inherit problems that had nothing to do with him.

Behind him, her legs suddenly gave out.

She caught herself against the wall before fully collapsing, then dragged herself upright again through what looked like enormous effort.

Stan never saw it.

But something about the encounter stayed with him.

Inside the restroom, he found himself replaying it over and over.

Her reaction had been too extreme.

He’d met women who disliked men. Women who guarded their space. Women who didn’t want strangers approaching them.

This had felt different.

This had been fear stripped down to pure instinct.

And the physical symptoms bothered him even more.

The sweat. The unstable balance. The trembling effort it took just to remain standing.

Those weren’t signs of irritation or social discomfort.

Those were signs of something physically wrong.

The longer he thought about it, the worse the feeling became.

Finally, Stan washed his hands, stepped back into the hallway,

and immediately understood his instincts had been right.

Several men were in the corridor now, moving the woman between them toward the exit.

At first glance, it could almost resemble people helping someone sick.

But only at first glance.

The woman who had recoiled from Stan’s mere presence, who had begged him not to come near her, was now being dragged away by multiple men with almost no resistance at all.

That contradiction hit him instantly.

People terrified of strangers do not quietly allow themselves to be taken away by a group of unfamiliar men.

Unless they no longer have the ability to resist.

Stan’s expression hardened.

He moved closer.

The woman’s head lifted weakly.

The moment she spotted him, a frightened sound escaped her throat, strained and desperate, like she was trying to communicate something through whatever little control she still had left over her body.

Fear.

A plea for help.

Maybe both.

Outside, a white van pulled up to the entrance.