Chapter Three

Celeste's Pov

He was in the east wing office when Iris brought me to him. Not the main office he used in the mornings. The other one, the one I had only seen the door of. She knocked once and left before he answered which told me she already knew he would.

He was standing at the window when I walked in. I noticed his posture was different. Looser. The version of him I had seen in the kitchen that third morning, not the one at the dinner table.

"Sit down," he said.

I sat.

He turned around and looked at me for a moment before he moved to the chair across from mine. No desk between us this time. That was different too.

"I want to talk about the heir clause," he said.

I kept my face still. "Alright."

"The thirty day window is a formality. I'm not going to hold you to a timeline." He paused. "But I need you to understand that the clause itself is not negotiable. It's the foundation of this arrangement."

"I understand that."

"Do you have concerns."

I almost laughed. "I have several."

"Tell me one."

I looked at him directly. "I don't know you. And the contract asks for something that requires a degree of trust I haven't had time to build."

He was quiet for a moment. "That's reasonable."

"I'm not asking for your permission to find it reasonable."

Something moved behind his eyes. "I'm not offering it. I'm agreeing with you." He leaned back slightly. "I'm not interested in forcing anything. That's not—" He stopped. Started again. "That's not how I operate."

I studied him. He seemed uncomfortable in a way that felt genuine rather than performed, like the admission had cost him something small but real.

"Then what are you proposing," I said.

"Time. Within reason."

"How much time."

"Enough." He stood up, which I was starting to understand was how he ended conversations. "Dinner is at seven."

I stood too. "You said I could have information before decisions that affect me."

He paused.

"The meeting you have tomorrow morning," I said. "Iris scheduled it and rearranged my one free afternoon around it without telling me why. That affects my week. I want to know what it is."

He turned and looked at me with an expression I was beginning to catalogue. It was the one that meant I had surprised him and he wasn't sure yet if that was a problem.

"Allied families," he said. "Routine. Nothing you need to be present for."

"I didn't ask to be present. I asked to be informed."

A beat. "Fine."

I walked out before he could.

********************

That night I lay in bed and thought about what Sera said. Something feels different about him today. I had assumed she meant his mood, some tension she picked up on the way she sometimes did with people. But the man I had just spoken to in that office was not tense. He was almost approachable. More than he had been any other time that week.

Which meant Sera had felt a version of him I hadn't encountered yet.

I turned that over until I fell asleep.

I woke up at two in the morning to voices in the corridor. Low and quick, the kind of exchange that happens when someone is trying not to be heard. I lay still and listened but the words were too muffled. Then footsteps. Two sets. Moving away from my room toward the back of the house.

I got up.

I knew it was not a smart decision. I made it anyway.

The corridor was empty by the time I opened my door. I followed the direction the footsteps had gone and found myself moving toward the part of the house that connected to the back structure. The one Iris had called storage.

The door at the end of the corridor was closed but not latched. Light came through the gap at the bottom.

I stood there for a moment. Then I pushed it open just enough.

Two men were standing inside with their backs to me. One I recognized immediately from his posture, Nico. The other was broader, dressed differently, and was speaking in a low voice I hadn't heard before. I couldn't see his face. Nico was nodding at something he said and there was a ease between them that looked old. Comfortable. The way people stand when they have known each other a long time.

I pulled the door back to where it was and returned to my room.

I sat on the edge of my bed and thought about what I had just seen. Nothing incriminating. Nothing that explained the light at two in the morning or the second set of footsteps. Just two men talking.

But the second man's voice had been warm in a way that Nico's never was. And his laugh, short and quiet and only once, had sounded almost identical.

Almost.

*******************

Breakfast the next morning was back to normal. Nico at the head of the table, formal, minimal words, the version of him I had catalogued as the default. I watched him over my coffee and thought about the corridor and said nothing.

Iris came in midway through to confirm the morning meeting and I noticed Nico didn't look at her the way he had the night before. The ease was completely gone. Like a switch had been thrown and the man from the corridor had simply stopped existing.

"Will there be anything else," Iris asked him.

"No." He glanced at me briefly. "Make sure Mrs. Voss has her afternoon back this week."

Iris nodded and left.

I set down my cup. "Thank you."

He didn't respond. Just picked up the paper.

And I sat there thinking about a laugh I had heard once through a gap in a door and couldn't stop hearing since.

At exactly that moment Iris reappeared in the doorway. Her face was the careful kind of blank that meant something had happened.

"There's a man at the gate," she said. "He says his name is Dominic Rey. He says Mrs. Voss will want to see him."

I felt the blood leave my face.

Nico lowered the paper very slowly and looked at me. "Who is Dominic Rey."