Chapter 3 - The Boy From Nowhere

(Lorei's POV)

The Walker estate has its own gate. An actual gate, with an actual guard, who checks a tablet before letting our car through like we're entering a country and not a house.

This is insane. People actually live like this?

It’s been six months since the funeral. Six months of my mom crying into takeout containers on our tiny kitchen table, and then, out of nowhere, Richard Walker.

She met him at a fundraiser her old boss dragged her to, three months after Dad died, back when she still wasn't sleeping and barely eating and I was genuinely worried she might just stop functioning altogether. Richard was there representing some charity board. She told me later he was the first person all night who didn't ask her a single question about grief. He just asked what she thought of the terrible band they'd hired, and made her laugh for the first time in weeks.

They started with coffee. Then dinner. Then he was picking her up in a car with a driver, and she was coming home glowing in a way I hadn't seen since before Dad got sick with worry over the business that last year. I watched it happen in fast-forward, coffee to dinner to engaged in four months, married two weeks after that. It was as if the grief of my father’s death had left a door open in her and Richard just walked right through it before it could shut again.

I didn't say anything against it. How could I? She looked happy. For the first time in half a year, my mother looked like a person again instead of a ghost wearing clothes. If marrying a man who owns half a shipping empire and a house with its own gate is what did that, I wasn't going to be the one to ruin it.

I just wasn't ready for what "marrying into it" would actually mean.

"You'll love it here," Mom says, squeezing my hand in the back seat, hope all over her face. "Richard's son is around your age. I'm sure you two will get along."

Great. A stepbrother. Exactly what I needed this year.

The staff meet us at the door, actual staff, in actual uniforms. This guy is soaking rich. One of them was already reaching to take my bags before I've even fully gotten out of the car. Two of them exchange a look when they think I'm not watching. I know that look. It's the who let her in here look. I got enough of those at Fisher's parties to recognize it instantly.

Richard's warm, at least, pulling my mom into a hug like he's genuinely thrilled she's home. Kind eyes, gray at the temples, nothing like the cold, sharp energy I'd braced for walking in.

"Elias should be down any minute," he says, checking his watch. "He's been buried in work all week, but I told him today wasn't optional."

I smile at him, not knowing what else to do, then a very awkward silence sets in. Then suddenly, a girl’s laugh rings out from the top of the staircase, and then a woman comes down the stairs still adjusting the strap of her dress, hair a mess in a way that makes it very clear what kind of night she had. She doesn't even glance at us. A few steps behind her, comes I’m guessing, Elias, doing up the top button of his shirt like it's the most boring task in the world.

"Text me," the woman says at the door, going up on her toes to kiss his cheek.

"Sure," he says, looking past her. He doesn't walk her out. He just watches the staff usher her to a car like she's a delivery being collected, and turns back into the house rubbing a hand over his jaw, completely unbothered that his father and two total strangers just watched the whole thing.

Richard obviously didn’t train his son well. Because what the fuck? Oh my god. He does not care even a little.

"Elias," Richard says, and there's a warning edge under the pleasantness. "This is Diane, and this is her daughter, Lorei."

Elias's eyes land on me, and everything in me just... stops. Then something happens on his face too. His eyes widen just slightly, and for one second there's something almost like excitement there. Then almost immediately, it's gone. It disappeared so fast I'd think I imagined it if I hadn't been staring directly at him.

What a weirdo.

"Lorei." He says my name slowly, his eyes not leaving my face. "We haven't met."

It's not really a question. It sounds like he's checking.

"No," I say, thrown by the intensity of it. "I don't think so. I'd remember."

There’s that flicker in his eyes again, and then it’s gone even faster this time.

"Right," he says, flat and bored. His eyes drag down and back up like he's cataloguing me. "Well. Welcome to the family, I guess. Try not to touch anything that's actually worth money."

"Elias." Richard's voice goes sharp. "Be nice."

"I am being nice." He doesn't even look apologetic. "You should see how I treat people I don't like."

Okay. Rude. Extremely rude.

"You’re remarrying," he says, like he's explaining something to a child, "which I have exactly zero opinions about, since I plan on being in this house as little as humanly possible going forward. So…." He checks a watch that probably costs more than my mother's car. Then he looks back up at my mother and I "I’m going out, and I won’t be back till dinner time.”

He turns to head for the stairs, and just before he's fully out of sight, he glances back, one more look, quick, and there's that flicker again, something almost like satisfaction this time, like he's already three steps ahead of a conversation nobody else in the room is having.

Then he's gone, and I'm left standing in the entry hall with my mom and Richard and a house full of staff pretending they didn't just watch all of that.

"He's just... adjusting," Richard says, apologetic. "It's a big change for him too."

Sure, adjusting. That's definitely what that was.

I don't know what that look on his face meant. I don't know why he seemed almost pleased to see me, right before turning cold enough to freeze a room. I don't know anything about Elias Walker except that he said we've never met, and he's clearly, obviously, one hundred percent lying about it, and I have absolutely no idea why he'd bother.