Hands shaking, heart racing, Priya closed the bathroom door. Locked it.

Alone. She was alone and could let the mask drop. Tears welled. The surprising ache of them blistered and stung as they burst from her—a ruptured dam letting all her pent up emotion spill. A relentless, gushing flood she couldn't control, only purge.

She shuffled on weak knees to the row of porcelain sinks and braced the closest one, holding herself together just enough to look up at her smiling reflection.

Tears rolled thick down her cheeks and thankfully she'd had the foresight to wear waterproof mascara or else the mess would've been beyond simple repair. She could deal with blotchy cheeks and red nose but raccoon eyes? Hell no. Turning on the water, she dipped her hands into the cold stream and pressed wet hands to her warm face.

I won. And not just won—slayed. The expression on Crowley's legal team as she handed over the file outlining Tim Crowley's underhanded involvement in years of tenant harassment/abuse was something she'd never forget.

He'd rolled into the judge's chambers with three, two men and one woman. The woman Priya immediately recognized as a long-standing litigator who'd crushed any other whispers of malpractice into dust. The other two had been more for show and intimidation as she knew well enough that Leilani Ogaki was a veritable hurricane few could withstand.

And she had.

Genie had stood by her the whole time, shoulder to shoulder, holding her ground with strength of belief in her that was beyond touching. They'd been a team. A unit as she worked Crowley into a settlement that would see Genie out of renting and into ownership of her gorgeous little Brownstone. She's lived there for fifty-three years and had a solid record as a valuable tenant all that time. Crowley's company was hemorrhaging money and the developers had plans to restore the Brownstones to sell for triple the offer.

So what was worse? Taking a ten-million-dollar paper cut or facing a crippling $1.5 billion-dollar knockout?

Without a single, credible leg to stand on, Crowley's defense collapsed like a Styrofoam cup beneath a boulder. And not only had the judge awarded in Genie's favour, but she'd also demanded an additional five million dollar payout for punitive damages.

After that, she'd make a quick call to Heather, informing her of the settlement agreement and over the next few hours it had been full steam ahead to get everything drafted and finalized before end of day. A chaotic blur of activity that hadn't let her feet touch the ground long enough for the reality to sink in until this moment, right now.

With a sobbing giddy, bounce in her five hundred dollar heels and thousand dollar suit, Priya pulled out her phone from her purse and unlocked the screen. To her surprise, the first number she pulled up wasn't to one of her Sisters...but Hadrian. Not letting herself pause to over think it, her thumb swiped across his number and the call rang out.

He answered after the first ring.

"Hey." He sounded surprised, but pleasantly so. "How'd it go?"

A laugh burst out of her that wavered on a bright, weepy note. Priya pressed her hand to her mouth and smiled. "You're telling me you haven't heard by now?"

He laughed too, a gentle, grating sound that made her shiver. "Yeah, I did. But wanted to hear it from you. Congratulations are in order."

"It's crazy. It's so crazy, I can still hardly breathe. It's like...everything I've before this moment—it was important and meaningful, but different. As a student, somehow I felt like there was always this barrier between me and my cases. Like a force field." Scheisse, she was babbling.

"I get it," he agreed. "It was safe. There was always an opportunity to start over, to reset the tally. But this is the big leagues. Every move we make from this point onward, there is no more resetting. It's carved in stone and will follow us everywhere."

Priya pulled out a couple sheets of paper towel and smiled as she dabbed at her cheeks, under her eyes, clearing away fresh tears. "Exactly. That's it exactly. I didn't think I'd feel like this. So emotional."

"Threw up after my first. Right outside the courtroom steps and all over my ferragamos."

She pressed a hand to her lips, smothering the laugh that wanted so badly to escape. "Oh no."

"I've got a reservation for that new tapas place," he said, a hint of pleading in his tone. "Meet you there for seven-thirty?"

Priya's stomach rumbled at the mention of food, and more so at the thought of spending time with him. "A reservation that just so happens to be at a restaurant I was planning to check out next week?"

"Let's just say I was hoping you'd call," Hadrian's voice slid out and ended in a guilty chuckle. "C'mon, have a drink with me. Let's celebrate."

She chewed the edge of her thumb nail, worn down after the events of the day and ruining her gorgeous and very expensive manicure. Her head immediately leapt in to say no, but her heart wasn't quite so willing to stay quiet this time. What harm would it do to enjoy a night out with him? They'd been a team. Collaborated and conquered.

She stared at Hadrian's name on her screen, wavering between yes and no when his words from earlier that day echoed softly.

We're allies, remember? I've got your back and you cover mine.

"Okay," she said. "Seven-thirty. I'll be there."

#

Faced tipped back, Priya smoothed her hands over hair. Loose it tumbled in the warm breeze that kicked, lifted and pushed across the open terrace. Overhead twinkling lights wrapped around exposed trellis and dotted like brilliant stars.

Hadrian smiled over his glass of Chianti, comfortably reclined and casually dressed in distressed jeans and buttoned down shirt cuffed at the elbows. Shark tooth necklace resting between the divots of his clavicles. They'd ploughed through almost a dozen amazing plates of food and two bottles of wine; every inch of her hummed with energy and complete bliss.

"Can I ask you something?" Hadrian straightened in his seat and set down his glass, pausing to top up hers before his, draining the bottle.

"Sure."

"It's...delicate." Hadrian the liquid in his glass. "About your father. I don't mean to pry...it's just...I've never met anyone who was born through anonymous insemination before."

"You'd be surprised. Insemination became a big thing in the eighties, boomed in the nineties. There's more of us kicking around then you could imagine." Priya smiled. "What do you want to know?"

"When Winschitz exposed it at the mock trials...you were pretty distressed afterwards." His eyes lifted to hers, inquisitive and unsure. "Guess I wanted to know how you feel about the whole thing. What it was like for you, growing up."

Any other night, she might've been angry and shut his curiosity down cold. Not many knew the truth about her, so it wasn't something that came up in regular conversation, if ever, and that was how she preferred it. The truth about her parentage wasn't a subject she easily broached with just anyone, but whether it was the win or the buzz of victory, Priya found herself answering.

"My mom was thirty-two when she decided she wanted to have a child. Single and with no desirable prospects, she was never the kind of woman to kick back and wait for anything much less a man." Priya set her arms to the table and stroked her hands over her exposed biceps. She'd changed from her work suit into a filmy coral silk tank with straps thin as an eyelash over pale ripped jeans. The air was thick with summer heat but softened by the strong brush of breeze. A gorgeous night spent with incredible food and great company.

"It was weird," she mused, "not knowing the other half of my origins. I don't know where my nose or jaw came from, or my interest in photography. My smile and love of classical music obviously came from my mother, along with my feminist ideals, but the rest of who I am was a complete mystery I stopped trying to solve."

Hadrian nodded, lips drawn together in interest and thought. "Were you ever angry about it?"

Priya smiled. "Of course. I am the result of rubber gloves and a syringe full of sperm from an unknown man. A donor-conceived child. It all sounded so...clinical, when she tried to explain it to me. So cold. I'd found out accidentally when I was thirteen, after years of her playing the 'I can't talk about this right now' game that exacerbated me to no end. So yeah, I was pretty angry. To be born into this situation, with its limitations and confusion, ignorant of my biological roots. To know I would never know who he was, never have those questions answered...almost pushed me and mother apart."

As Hadrian speared the last of the grilled calamari topped in a rich, spicy sauce, Priya helped herself to the chorizo sliders. "I couldn't stay mad at her for long," she continued, licked grease off her thumb. "All my life she has been my hero, my everything. So as a coping mechanism, I used to think that he was dead. That made it easier. I met Isobel when I was ten, and we both were raised in a single parent home. Her mother took off when she was seven and Isobel didn't talk about her much, but I was so jealous. Isobel knew her name, her face, her voice and had memories. All the things I wouldn't. A few years later, Eshe's father had an affair and her parents almost divorced. She was in so much pain, and I tried to empathize but I was jealous of her, too. For all the attention she was getting. No one had ever offered me support or sympathy like that. And it made me angrier."

Hadrian's expression melted into regret. "I'm sorry; we don't have to talk about this anymore if it's upsetting you."

Priya shook her head. No, for reasons she couldn't understand she had to talk about this. Needed to. "Music helped heal me. I would lock myself in my room and blast all kinds of songs with lyrics of broken homes and broken people. Because that's how I felt. Broken. Eventually I learned to channel my anger into school. I worked myself to the bone. Long and hard. I excelled, and the higher I soared, the less of that anger and pain felt. My entire life's self-worth was wrapped up in being the best. Top of my class. Highest grades. Most potential. I didn't realize until much later in life that it wasn't so much anger I felt as kid, but fear. Fear of the unknown. And never knowing who I was. My mother always referred to my father as a donor rather than a person, and I don't think she ever did consciously, but that made me feel like I wasn't real somehow. That I was less. Took a long time to see past that, to see myself in the mirror and not become overwhelmed with fear and loathing."

He watched her as she spoke, his chin set on his hand and finger pressed across his lips as she worked through it all, spilling her deepest insecurities into the space between them.

"I've learned to accept this truth, and I don't worry about accidental incest, which many people have asked me about before. As it stands now, my mother remarried when I was seventeen and I grew to love him as much as I love my mother. He is the man who asked how I was doing when he came home from work, came to all my school events and productions, took my mother and I on holidays every year, bought me all the birthday or Christmas presents I could ever want. He taught me to appreciate the ballet, the candid truth about boys, and cried when he dropped me off for my first term at Harvard."

At the same time, I think my mum could have brought me up alone and done a bloody good job of it, too. I have the utmost respect for women or men who go it alone. If I had been raised by just my mum, I suspect I would be just as happy. We automatically assume that the people who share our genes will love us and be our parents, but that isn't always the case. It's completely possible to be a biological father and not a dad, as many people know, just as it is to be a dad and not a biological father.

"Alright, enough about me. You're turn to start sharing."

Hadrian grinned, dazzling white teeth against stubble and tanned skin. "Fair enough. I have a tattoo."

Priya snorted from behind her hands. "Get the f*ck out."

"I kid you not." Lifting his wine, he winked. "Play your cards right and maybe I'll show you."

"A dolphin?"

"I'll have you know dolphins you know dolphins are nature's most majestic and noble animal. One even saved my life." He paused for a moment, then gave a nod of his head, mind made up. Scooting his chair back, Hadrian shifted his right leg out from under the table and cuffed his pants to the knee, revealing a length of tanned skin streaked with savage scars.

Priya sucked in a breath, her belly knotting with a mixture of shock and sympathy. "What happened?"

Satisfied she'd got a long, hard look at it, he rolled the denim back down, hiding his savaged limb. "I started playing football—soccer—at the age of four. I was a natural. Lived and breathed for the sport and wanted to do nothing else with my life than play." Tucking himself back at the table, he folded his hands together and set them in his lap. "My dad wasn't thrilled but he supported my decision and I almost went pro but my senior year I'd gone out to the coast of Oahu with some mates to celebrate. Middle of the night, a few of us went out for a bit of surfing when a tiger shark got a hold of me by the thigh and dragged me down." His voice darkened with the strain of memories and Priya's chest tightened at the thought of his fear and misery.

To be entombed in black waters with nothing but fear and blinding pain, the sting of salt in his eyes, searing down his throat as he screamed and choked on bloody water.

"I would've died," he said with a resigned nod of his head. "Fact is I thought I already was, but a pod of dolphins were passing through--a sharks natural enemy. SOmehow they knew, brilliant creatures, and saved me. Chased the bastard off. I can't say how I got to shore but I did. remember looking down at my hands and seeing my blood. It looks black in the moonlight. Black as ink."

Hand over her mouth, she listened as he spoke of the airlift to the hospital as he blacked in and out of consciousness. Nearly died twice on route and faced a six hour and eighty-four stitches to close the gash.

"Destroyed my knee and my femur is sandwiched between two titanium plates which effectively killed my chances of professional sports. It's why I limp a bit, though I hide it as best I can. They'd found this tooth embedded in my cracked kneecap," he said, leaning forwards to show her the one he wore around his neck. All this time she'd thought it was some pretentious hipster thing but the truth was far more symbolic.

"My dad flew up to stay with me in the hospital for the six weeks of recovery. We talked, played video games, whatever and without anything or anyone getting in the way. Work didn't come up. Not once. It was great to have my dad like that, and we'd never been so close in all my life. I learned things about him I'd never known, he told me stories and jokes, we laughed and cried." A soft smile full of more emotion than Priya knew how to process crossed his face. "Then I got the all clear and dad decided to head back to Manhattan ahead of me. I was going to move back with him, start law school in the fall. He never made it past the airport."

Priya swallowed hard. "What happened?"

"Heart attack. Dropped him like a stone and that was it. He was gone." Sighing heavily, his eyes met hers, dark with grief. "So now I wear this—to remember that time we shared together." He stroked a hand over the shark tooth again, his fingers circling over that shard of bone that had almost cost him his life. "To remember what I'd survived, how fleeting life is and to always—always—be fearless. To take chances. To live."

Her heart broke for him. Shattered. And somehow still beat as she absorbed all that she'd learned about him tonight. She'd known people who'd endured some pretty brutal experiences, but this touched her deeper than she knew how to process. As Hadrian paid the bill (as he insisted despite her protests), she watched him, aware that something inside of her was forever changed by this moment.

Everything she'd thought about him--assumed about him--how wrong she'd been, all shamed her.

"Your father would be proud of you," she said as they stepped out onto the sidewalk. Tucking his phone into his back pocket, Hadrian's eyes slid down to her, and smiled.

"You think so?"

"Definitely. Without question."

He stopped in front of her, angled his head in thought. "We didn't see eye to eye on much, but that time we had...I'd like to think would've changed all that. He wasn't an easy man to grow up with, and didn't know the first thing about being a family man, but he tired in his own way. I see that now."

She stroked a hand up his arm and over his shoulder. A gesture meant to sooth as words escaped her.

His gaze hardened, his smile faded and before Priya could blink his mouth was on hers. Hot, hard but holding there, waiting for her to yield. To accept. And she did. For a single, wanton instant. She slid into that possessive glide of lips and greedily took before he pulled back. Breath short and golden green eyes blazing. His arm banded tight around her waist.

"Come home with me."

"We can't—"

"Stop." His fingers slid into her hair, fisted as he pressed his brow to hers. His heart hammered against her hands, his chest vibrated with each bone rattling beat and shook straight into her like an earthquake. Splitting her foundations. Cracking her wide open. "Come home with me, Priya. Forget the rules. Forget commonsense. One night. Just one."

For the second time head and heart went to war.

And for the second time, her head lost.

https://youtu.be/WsPfSXJaelk

**AN**

Oooooooooooooh snap!!!!

I can't tell you how excited I am to hit this moment. This was one of the first scenes I'd drafted for the SISTERHOOD and seriously made me fall in love with Hadrian. Now that we're here, I'm a little sad because it means we're officially almost over.

A bonus SMEXY scene is coming for those of you who want to know how it's all going to go down between these two ;)

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