Chapter 10

Scarlett Vance

Every nerve in my body was awake.

Not from fear.

From something else I couldn’t quite name.

He stood fifteen feet away and yet the air between us felt tight.

Pressurized.

Like the room had too much heat trapped inside it.

His jaw was set.

His eyes had not moved from mine.

He looked like a man who had already made his decision and was waiting to see if I was smart enough to agree with it.

I met his gaze evenly.

“Very clear,” I said.

Then I added softly.

“Father.”

Something shifted in his expression.

Fast.

Small.

Controlled.

His jaw tightened slightly.

His eyes hardened—not colder, just sharper.

He didn’t like that.

The word Father in my voice bothered him in a way he had not expected.

And watching him work to hide that reaction was one of the quietest, most satisfying moments I had experienced in either of my lives.

He dropped his arms.

Turned back toward the window.

The conversation was already finished in his mind.

“You start tonight,” he said.

“The usual time.”

“Understood.”

I turned toward the door.

My hand closed around the handle.

One movement and I would be out in the hallway again where the air felt normal and my lungs could finally work properly.

“Scarlett.”

His voice stopped me halfway through the motion.

I paused.

I did not turn immediately.

I gave myself half a second to arrange my face.

Then I looked back.

“I have the photographs you took in the records room,” he said calmly.

He was still by the window.

Still relaxed.

Still studying me from across the room with those gray eyes that saw far too much.

“All three copies,” he added.

“Including the ones from the wall.”

The wall.

He knew about the wall.

The words landed so quietly that my mind refused to process them for a second.

Not just the records room.

Not just the camera image.

The wall.

The loose stone panel at the eastern boundary.

The envelope I had hidden there.

The place I believed no one else knew existed.

My face did not change.

My mouth did not open.

I made absolutely sure of that.

“Think carefully about what you do next,” he said.

And then he smiled.

Not the cold smile he used as armor.

Not the polite expression he showed the pack.

A real one.

Small.

Genuine.

It reached the outer edges of his eyes and stayed there for three seconds before disappearing when he turned back to the window.

Like it had never happened.

Like he was impressed.

I walked out of the study.

I shut the door behind me.

And stood in the corridor with my hand still on the handle while my heart slammed against my ribs.

He had the photographs.

Which meant he had either retrieved them himself or sent someone who knew exactly where to look.

That wall.

That stone.

A hiding place I had discovered by accident two years ago when I tripped on an exposed root during an afternoon walk and caught myself against the boundary wall.

The stone had shifted beneath my palm.

I had been alone.

I had told no one.

But in my previous life…

I had not been alone when I used it.

I slowly turned my head.

Down the corridor.

And the thought that settled into my chest was so cold it silenced every other thought in my mind.

Because someone was standing there.

Leaning casually against the wall.

A champagne flute balanced lightly in her fingers.

That familiar slow smile curving across her lips.

Zara.