CHAPTER 8: NUMBERS DON'T LIE

"Tedious," I repeated, keeping my voice light, unbothered, even as my pulse had not slowed since she walked in through the door. "I don't mind tediousness. Because I grew up doing my pack's books by candlelight most winters. And numbers are the one thing that never confused me."

Something flickered behind Mara's polite smile, there and gone so fast I almost doubted I had seen it. "How resourceful," she said. "Still, I wouldn't want you to be wasting your first week here buried in invoices. I can have someone show you around the estate instead, somewhere far more pleasant than this room."

"But I think I like this room," I responded, and then I set the stack of papers in my hand down carefully and casually, as though they meant nothing at all. "Though I do have a few questions, if you have a moment to spare. Since you're in charge of managing the accounts here"

Her eyes moved to the stack again, quick and involuntary. "Of course," she replied.

Then I pulled the kitchen supply order to the top, sliding it towards her. "This total seems very high, compared to the ones from the months before it. Is there a reason the costs jumped so suddenly?"

"Prices fluctuate," she said smoothly. "Vendors raise rates. It happens more than people realise."

"All at once? Across three separate vendors, all within the same two-weeks span?"

Her smile did not waver, but her hand, resting on the edge of the desk, had gone very still. "I will have to check the specific contracts to give you an exact answer. Because I don't memorize every invoice, Luna."

"Of course," I said. "I wouldn't expect you to. I only noticed because the signature approving each of them is the same." I tapped the corner of the page, where her own initials sat neatly beside the total. "Yours."

The silence that followed lasted only a second, but it told me more than anything she could have said. Mara's composure did not crack, not fully, but something behind her eyes sharpened into calculation, the look of someone recalculating how dangerous I might actually be.

"I approve a significant number of invoices," she said carefully. "It would be unusual if my signature weren't on most of them."

"I know that's true." Then I gathered the papers back into my hands, keeping my tone light, almost apologetic. "I didn't mean to make it sound like an accusation. I'm new here. And I'm sure there's an explanation for all of it."

"There is," she said, too quickly.

"Good. Then you won't mind if I ask Xavier to walk me through the vendor contracts sometime this week. Just so I understand how the household budget works. I'd hate to keep asking you questions when I know your time is valuable."

Something in her face went very carefully blank, the same practised stillness I had clocked the moment she walked in. "Of course," she said again, her voice smooth as glass. "Whatever puts your mind at ease, Luna."

She left the room a few minutes later, and I sat there for a long moment after the door closed, my heart hammering harder than it had all day, staring at the small stack of documents in my hands like they might catch fire.

I did not know what I had found yet. But I knew enough to understand that I had just watched a woman lie to my face with practised, professional calm, and that whatever she was hiding behind those numbers, she had not expected anyone in this house to notice, least of all the bride nobody wanted.

I found Xavier in his study an hour later, his door half open, a glass of something amber untouched on the desk beside a stack of papers he was flipping through with the same restless energy I had already come to associate with.

"Luna," he said, glancing up, that easy smile already sliding into place. "To what do I owe the pleasure of a surprise visit?"

"I need your help with something," I said, closing the door behind me. "And I need you to look at it first before you say anything to anyone else."

That got his attention. He set down his pen, sitting up straighter, the charm dimming into something sharper and more focused. "That sounds ominous."

I set the stack of documents on his desk and watched his face as he flipped through them, watched the moment his easy expression shifted into something colder, more precise, his eyes moving fast between figures, dates, and that same careful signature repeated again and again.

"Where did you find these?" he said quietly, not looking up.

"The administrative wing. I was helping sort invoices and noticed the totals didn't match previous months. Mara found me looking through them. And she wasn't kind of happy about it."

Xavier's jaw tightened. "Not happy, how?"

"Her response feels too calm. Like she had an explanation ready before I'd even finished asking the question." Then I sat down across from him. "I think she's been expecting someone to ask eventually. I just don't think she expected it to be me, and I don't think she expected me to already have the proof in my hands."

Xavier sat back slowly, rubbing a hand across his jaw, doing the math I could already see forming behind his eyes. "If these numbers are what they look like," he said, "someone has been quietly bleeding this pack's resources for months, maybe longer, and Mara has either been careless enough to leave a trail, or careless enough to think nobody would ever look."

"Or maybe she's not the only one involved," I said quietly. "Someone this careful about the ceremony, about appearances, doesn't get sloppy with numbers by accident. It's either she's protecting someone or she's being protected by someone."

Xavier's eyes lifted to mine, sharp and assessing in a way that felt entirely different from the easy charm he had greeted me with days ago. "You've only been in this house a week," he said.

"I know," I responded.

"And you already found something my own people missed."

"I had time on my hands and nothing to lose," I said. "Besides, nobody in this house expects me to be looking at anything. So that's the only reason I found it."

Something shifted in his expression, respect, careful and reluctant, threading through the calculation. "We need to bring this to Damian," he said, already gathering the papers. "Tonight. Before Mara has time to cover whatever this actually is."

"Agreed," I said to him.

He was halfway to the door when it burst open without a knock, one of the household guards standing there breathless, his eyes wide with the particular kind of panic that meant something had already gone wrong.

"Mr. Cross," the guard said, chest heaving. "Mara's gone. Her room's cleared out, her car's missing from the garage, and security just found the east wing's camera feed cut for the last twenty minutes."

Xavier's face went very still, the papers in his hand suddenly feeling a great deal heavier than a stack of invoices should.

"She knew," I whispered. "She knew the moment I walked out of that room, and she's already running away."