Chapter 5: Moved In, Not Welcomed

“You’re in the wrong wing.”

Ivy stopped mid-step, coffee cup still in hand, and turned. A woman stood in the hallway watching her with an expression that managed to be warm and assessing at the same time. Dark hair. Effortless elegance. The kind of beauty that did not need to try, which somehow made it more intimidating instead of less.

“I’m sorry?”

“The kitchen you’re looking for is on the other side of the house. This hallway just loops back to the studies.” The woman smiled, easy and disarming. “I’m Sable. Kade’s cousin. You must be Ivy.”

“I am.” Ivy shifted the empty cup in her hands, embarrassed despite herself. She had woken early, disoriented in the unfamiliar room, the ceiling too high and the silence too complete for her body to recognize it as safe enough for real sleep. She had set out to find coffee with nothing but instinct guiding her, which had apparently failed within the first ten minutes. “Nobody gave me a map.”

“Nobody ever does. This house was built to confuse outsiders on purpose, or so the story goes.” Sable fell into step beside her, guiding her back the way she had come with a hand light on her elbow. Familiar in a way that felt almost like being steered rather than helped, though Ivy could not have said exactly why the distinction mattered. “Don’t worry. I got lost for a month when I first moved in properly, and I actually grew up half in this family. You’ll manage eventually.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“It wasn’t meant to be reassuring. It was meant to be honest.” Sable laughed, soft and genuine-sounding. Ivy found herself relaxing slightly despite every instinct telling her not to trust anyone in this house yet. Not after last night. Not after the name Talia and the way Marcus’s face had changed at the mention of it. “Take the east staircase next time. It’s shorter than the one you probably used last night, and it comes out much closer to the kitchen.”

“Thank you.”

They walked in comfortable silence for a moment. Sable’s presence was easy in a way nothing else in this house had been since Ivy arrived. It would have been easy to like her. Easier than she expected given everything else about the family she had married into.

“Can I ask you something,” Ivy said. “Honestly.”

“Always.”

“What’s he actually like. Kade. Not the version he shows people in negotiations.”

Sable’s expression shifted. Something careful moved behind her eyes before the warmth returned, smooth and immediate, like a curtain drawn back into place. “Kade’s complicated. He loves this family more than he’ll ever admit out loud, and he’ll do almost anything to protect it. Almost anything.” She said the last two words with a strange emphasis, light enough to seem offhand, precise enough that Ivy filed it away without meaning to. “He wasn’t always this cold, you know. There was a version of him, years ago, before his mother died, that most people in this house never got to meet. I sometimes wonder if you’ll get to see any of that version, or if it’s simply gone for good.”

“That’s not exactly an answer either.”

“No,” Sable agreed, smiling like the observation delighted her rather than caught her out. “It isn’t. Just be careful trusting him completely. This family doesn’t really do trust. Not even inside it.”

“That’s an odd thing to say about your own cousin.”

“It’s an honest thing to say.” Sable’s smile did not waver, but something underneath it had gone very still. “I’d rather you hear it from someone who cares what happens to you than learn it the hard way.”

Before Ivy could respond they reached the end of the hallway and a window overlooking the front drive. Something outside caught Ivy’s eye before she could stop herself from looking.

A black SUV sat parked across the street beyond the gate, engine running, windows tinted dark enough that she should not have been able to see anything inside it. But for one second, as she passed the window, the glass caught the morning light at exactly the wrong angle. She saw a man’s face turned toward the house. Toward her, specifically, she was almost certain, though it happened too fast to be sure of anything beyond the impression it left. A jolt low in her chest. The sense of being watched by someone who was not supposed to be watching at all. Their eyes met for less than a second before the vehicle pulled away from the curb and disappeared down the street, unhurried, like it had all the time in the world, like whoever sat behind that tinted glass had already seen exactly what they needed to see.

“Ivy?” Sable had stopped walking, following her gaze toward the empty street below. “Everything alright, truly?”

“There was a car. Someone was watching the house.”

Sable glanced out the window, though the SUV was already gone. Her expression did not change at all, which struck Ivy as strange given what she had just described. A stillness that seemed almost practiced. “Probably just a rival family’s usual reconnaissance. It happens more than you’d think. Nobody with real intentions parks that obviously, not this close to the gate in broad daylight.” She said it lightly, dismissively, and started walking again like the conversation was already over. Ivy noticed she did not ask a single follow-up question. Did not seem curious at all about a stranger watching the house where her own family lived. “You’ll get used to strangers watching this house. Everyone wants to know what happens inside it.”

They reached the kitchen a few minutes later. Sable’s warmth returned in full as she introduced Ivy to two of the staff, made a joke about the coffee machine being older than the mansion itself, made everything feel almost normal for a few minutes. The two of them leaning against the counter like ordinary women having an ordinary morning instead of two strangers circling each other in a house built on secrets. Ivy almost let herself forget, for the length of one cup of coffee, exactly what kind of family she had married into the night before.

It was not until Ivy sat down with her coffee that a member of the household staff approached, folder in hand, expression carefully neutral. The kind of neutral that came from years of delivering news nobody wanted in a house where reactions could be dangerous either way.

“Miss Marchetti. Mr. Cross asked me to inform you the wedding date has been moved, effective immediately, per his instructions this morning.”

Ivy’s stomach dropped. “Moved to when?”

“Four days from today.”

“Four days.” She set her cup down harder than she meant to. Coffee sloshed over the rim. “The contract said weeks. It said I’d have time to prepare, to see my brother again before the wedding. I haven’t even been able to call him since last night, and now you’re telling me I have four days to become someone’s wife in front of the entire city.”

“Mr. Cross apologizes for the short notice. There’s been a security concern that requires the marriage to be finalized and made public sooner than originally planned.” The staff member’s tone was practiced, rehearsed. Clearly not the first time she had delivered unwelcome news in this house. “He’ll explain the details himself this evening, if you’d like to request a meeting.” The staff member offered the folder forward. Ivy took it with hands that were not quite steady. The weight of it felt heavier than four days should have felt on paper.

Sable’s hand found Ivy’s shoulder, gentle, steadying. The perfect gesture of comfort from someone who had known this family her whole life. “It’s alright. I’ll help you prepare. Truly, I will. There’s so much to do in four days, but you’re not alone in it, whatever else this house has made you feel since last night.”

“Thank you.” The words came out smaller than Ivy intended. Exhaustion and fear finally catching up to her all at once. The coffee went cold in her hands while the folder of details sat waiting on the counter like a countdown clock made of paper. Every page inside it another decision she had not agreed to make on her own.

But underneath the reassurance, underneath the warmth that had felt so easy just minutes earlier in the hallway, Ivy caught something else in Sable’s expression. There and gone too fast to name for certain. Something that looked almost like satisfaction, quickly smoothed away beneath a sympathetic smile. Gone so fast Ivy might have imagined it entirely if she had not spent years training herself to notice exactly these kinds of details. The ones people worked hardest to hide. The ones that meant more than anything said out loud in this house full of careful, practiced kindness.

Ivy closed the folder.

Four days.

And outside the gate, a black SUV had already driven away with whatever it came to see.