CHAPTER FOUR: THE FIRST STORM

Ivy

The storm started before the thunder.

The rain fell in fine needles across the Blackwood Estate’s tall windows, tapping softly like they were trying to get inside, to crawl beneath my skin. The house didn’t creak, didn’t sigh. It watched. And it whispered when I wasn’t listening.

I had been walking the corridor barefoot, the hem of my silk robe brushing against cold marble floors. The shadows didn’t move, but they felt alive, clinging to the ceilings and corners like secrets waiting to strike. I’d tried to sleep. Tried to close my eyes and pretend I wasn’t trapped in a mausoleum masquerading as a mansion. But something inside me felt unsettled tonight. Not just the storm. Something else.

I passed the hallway that led to the east wing. The one I was told to avoid. A locked door waited at its end, tall and brooding like a sealed vault. I stopped in front of it, heart ticking louder than the wind.

What’s behind there, Lucien?

I imagined rooms filled with ghosts. With locked diaries and photo frames turned face-down. With truths he’d never say out loud. I pressed my palm against the wood. Cold. Still.

My reflection in the hallway mirror was pale and blurred. My hair spilled around my shoulders, messy and unbrushed. My skin looked translucent under the low light, as if I might fade at any second.

Then I heard it.

A low clink. Ice against glass. Somewhere down the stairs.

I followed the sound like it had summoned me. Every step quieter than the last. My breath barely made it past my lips.

The library door was open.

Lucien stood with his back to me, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, dark slacks perfectly pressed. His shoulders looked sharper in the firelight, like carved stone. In his hand, a glass of something amber. The decanter sat open beside him. Half-full. Or half-empty. Like him.

“You shouldn’t be awake.” His voice was low. Unshaken.

“You neither,” I said, leaning against the doorframe.

He didn’t turn around. Just raised the glass to his lips and drank.

“I don’t sleep much,” he said.

“Guilt?” I asked lightly.

A beat of silence. Then, “Some ghosts don’t let you rest.”

He turned then. Slowly. His expression unreadable, but those eyes—ice and fire woven together—fixed on me like he’d been expecting me all along.

I stepped inside. “I didn’t peg you for the brooding type.”

He smirked faintly. “That’s because you haven’t seen the worst of me.”

There was something about the way he said it. Not a threat. Not a confession. More like a promise. I walked farther into the room, drawn by the warmth of the fire and something far more dangerous.

Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Real ones. Not for show. Well-read. Annotated. One of them was still open beside the whiskey.

I nodded toward it. “What are you reading?”

“Dante.”

I raised a brow. “Hell seems appropriate.”

He didn’t laugh. Just looked at me, slow and calculating. “This house isn’t hell, Ivy. Hell would be kinder.”

My throat dried. “You really know how to make a girl feel welcome.”

“I didn’t bring you here to feel welcome.”

I swallowed the flicker of fear rising in my chest. “Then why did you bring me here?”

His gaze drifted over my robe, the way it clung to the curve of my waist, then back to my eyes. “That’s a complicated answer.”

I walked toward the fireplace, refusing to be intimidated. “Try me.”

The crackle of flames filled the silence.

He leaned against the bookshelf, glass still in hand. “You were a calculation. A merger. A signature on a dotted line. And yet…”

He paused.

“And yet,” I echoed, “you kissed me.”

His jaw tensed.

I stepped closer, so close the firelight danced across both our faces. “You kissed me, Lucien. Not out of strategy. Not to close a deal.”

A muscle ticked in his cheek. “You think you know me now?”

“No,” I whispered. “But I know what it feels like when someone touches me like they mean it.”

For a heartbeat, neither of us moved.

Then he set the glass down and stepped forward.

“I told you,” he said, voice low. “Curiosity is dangerous.”

“And I told you,” I replied, my voice barely audible, “fear doesn’t change the facts.”

His hand brushed a strand of hair from my face. Slowly. Deliberately. Like he was testing something in himself. Or in me.

I didn’t pull away.

“You want answers,” he said. “But you’re not ready for them.”

“Try me,” I whispered again.

He leaned down, his mouth so close I could feel the heat of his breath. “My last fiancée died in this house.”

The world tilted.

I blinked. “What?”

He pulled back, watching me carefully. “She drowned. In the pool out back. At least, that’s what the papers said.”

My heartbeat thundered in my ears.

“You think I believe you killed her?” I asked.

“I think,” he said, voice cold again, “you should ask why she was alone. And why no one called for help. And why, two days later, my father was declared bankrupt and dead.”

I took a shaky step back. The air felt heavier now. Thicker.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Because you wanted to know what happened to me.”

He turned back to the decanter and poured another drink, as if he hadn’t just shattered the floor beneath us.

The fire popped, sparks rising like dying stars.

“I’m not her,” I said.

He didn’t answer. Didn’t even look at me.

And that silence felt more terrifying than anything else.

I turned and left the library, each step harder than the last. The hallway stretched before me like a dark corridor in a nightmare.

I didn’t know if he was warning me.

Or testing how far I’d go before running.

But one thing was painfully clear—Lucien Blackwood was hiding far more than a broken heart.

He was hiding a war.

And I’d just stepped into the front lines.