CHAPTER 4 — "The First Crack"

Naomi's POV

I didn't sleep.

Not properly anyway. I lay on top of the covers fully dressed, staring at the ceiling with the photograph on my chest and my brain running in seventeen directions at once like it had consumed too much coffee and lost the brakes.

My mother.

Grace Bridges. Dead four years now, quietly and quickly from a heart condition she'd hidden from me until it was too late to do anything except sit beside her hospital bed and hold her hand while she slipped away.

She had never once mentioned the Holts. Not the name, not the house, not the boy with the serious eyes. My mother was warm and funny and occasionally evasive in the way of someone carrying a secret they'd decided was too heavy to pass on.

I was starting to understand why.

I slid the photograph under my pillow at midnight and told myself I'd deal with it in the morning. Then I stared at the ceiling until morning came and dealt with absolutely nothing.

By six-thirty I gave up, washed my face and went downstairs.

The house was already moving. Staff drifted through corridors, the kitchen smelled like coffee and something baking, and somewhere outside a gardener was trimming something that didn't need trimming yet.

I poured myself coffee and stood at the kitchen window and thought about my mother's smile in that photograph. Easy and familiar, the smile of someone comfortable. Someone who'd been there before.

Who were you to them, Mom?

"You're up early."

I turned. Adrian stood in the kitchen doorway in a dark sweater and trousers, hair slightly unsettled, looking like he'd been awake for hours already. He moved past me to the coffee machine without waiting for an answer, which I was starting to understand was just how he operated.

"Couldn't sleep," I said.

"Neither could I." He poured his coffee. Didn't elaborate.

We stood on opposite sides of the kitchen in silence. It wasn't comfortable exactly but it wasn't hostile either. It was the silence of two people who hadn't figured out what they were to each other yet.

He left without finishing his coffee.

***

I found trouble at eleven o'clock, which was actually impressive given that I'd been trying to stay invisible.

I was cutting through the east corridor toward the garden when I heard it. A sharp cry, a crash and then the kind of stillness that follows something going very wrong.

I pushed through the nearest door.

The room was a sitting room, all pale furniture and expensive carpet, and in the middle of it Adrian's grandmother lay on the floor with an overturned side table beside her and her hand pressed to her chest.

Two housemaids stood frozen in the doorway behind me, completely useless with shock.

I crossed the room in three strides and dropped to my knees beside her.

"Hey." I kept my voice steady and calm. "Hey, look at me. What's your name?"

"Eleanor," she managed, breathless and pale.

"Okay, Eleanor. I'm Naomi. Can you tell me where it hurts?"

"Chest." Her free hand gripped my wrist. "It's... tight. I can't..."

I pressed two fingers to her wrist, counted her pulse, scanned her face. Lips slightly pale. Shallow breathing. Grip strong but trembling.

"Has this happened before?" I asked.

"Once. Last... last year."

"Do you take medication for it? Is it upstairs?"

"Bedside table. Small white..."

"I've got it." I looked up sharply at the nearest maid. "Go. Top of the stairs, first door on the left, bedside table. Small white bottle. Run."

She ran.

I kept Eleanor's wrist in my hand and talked to her, calm and unhurried, watching her colour and her breathing while the clock on the wall ticked and the second maid wrung her hands in the corner.

The maid came back in under two minutes. I checked the bottle, confirmed the dosage and helped Eleanor take it, keeping her still and upright and breathing slowly.

By the time the household doctor arrived fourteen minutes later, Eleanor's colour had returned and her pulse had steadied and she was patting my hand with her eyes a little damp.

"Good girl," she murmured. "Good, quick girl."

I stayed until the doctor confirmed she was stable and then I sat back on my heels and let out the breath I'd been holding since I walked through the door.

That was when I noticed the audience.

Mrs. Cho stood near the door, very still. Two senior staff members beside her, equally still. Celeste, who had apparently materialized from nowhere, stood with her arms folded and her expression doing something complicated.

And Adrian.

Adrian stood just inside the doorway with his jacket half on like he'd been mid-departure when someone caught him. His coffee was still in his hand. He was looking at me with an expression I hadn't seen on him before.

Not the clinical assessment from the bridal suite. Not the cold distance from last night.

Something quieter. Something that didn't have a category yet.

"How did you know what to do?" Mrs. Cho asked carefully.

I stood up and smoothed my trousers.

"I studied medicine," I said simply. "For two years, before I stopped."

Nobody asked why I stopped. The room was too busy absorbing the first part.

Celeste's arms tightened across her chest. Mrs. Cho exchanged a glance with someone. The doctor looked up from his bag with mild surprise.

Adrian hadn't moved.

I picked up Eleanor's overturned side table, set it back on its feet and placed her reading glasses back on top of it neatly.

"She'll need to rest for the remainder of the day," I said to nobody in particular. "And someone should sit with her this evening."

I walked toward the door. Adrian stepped aside without a word to let me pass.

I was almost through when Eleanor's voice followed me out.

"Adrian."

I kept walking but I heard her clearly.

Her voice was soft and warm and certain in the way of someone who had waited a long time to say something.

"She's the girl."

I paused in the corridor for just half a second.

Then I kept walking.

But my heart was doing something strange and unsteady in my chest that had absolutely nothing to do with medicine.