CHAPTER 8

Amelia didn't look back as she walked through the front doors of the Carter house. Behind her stood the house she'd grown up in, the place that had once felt like home.

Today, it felt like a place she couldn't wait to escape.

“Mrs Kingston.” the driver said as she entered. They left the Carter estate.

“Turn here,” Amelia said. “Faster.”

The driver didn't turn fast enough.

Headlights filled the back window. Too close and too fast.

“Someone’s behind us,” Amelia said.

“I see them,” the driver said, his knuckles already white on the wheel.

The car slammed into the back bumper. Amelia’s head hit the seat.

“Hold on!”

Another hit. The car spun, the engine dead and smoke curling from the hood. Her phone had flown from her lap somewhere into the footwell.

Then she saw him.

A figure stepped out of the car that had rammed them, unhurried, black jacket, a ski mask pulled low over his face, closing the distance toward her window with the calm of someone who had done this before and expected no resistance.

Amelia’s hand found the door lock, though her fingers wouldn't stop shaking long enough to be useful.

Headlights swept across the wreckage from the opposite direction. Another car, coming fast, coming from behind the masked man in the ride. He froze for half a second, then turned and ran, disappearing into the tree line before Amelia could even process that help had arrived.

By the time Adrian reached her, the road held nothing but broken glass and the ringing silence left behind by violence that had already finished happening.

“Amelia.” He wrenched the door open, his voice raw in a way she'd never heard from him. “Look at me. Are you hurt?”

“I'm fine. I'm fine, I just…” Her voice cracked apart before she could finish the sentence.

Adrian didn't wait for her to find the rest of the words. He pulled her out of the car and into his arms, holding her the way you hold something you were genuinely afraid you might lose, his own hands trembling against her back.

“I told you not to go alone.”

“I wasn't alone. I had a driver.”

“A driver isn't protection.” His voice broke on the last word. “Amelia, if something had happened to you…”

He didn't finish his sentence cause he didn't have to. The unfinished half of it said more than anything he could have put into words, and for one long moment, neither of them moved, his hands resting against the back of her head as though holding her still might undo what had almost happened.

Then his eyes caught on something glinting faintly in the wreckage-strewn grass.

A black card, dropped near the crumpled guardhill. Adrian bent down, picked it up, and went very still.

“What is it?” Amelia asked.

He turned it over slowly. A small embossed logo caught the moonlight, easy to miss unless you already knew exactly what you were looking at.

Kingston Holdings private security.

Amelia’s breath left her all at once. “That's not possible.”

Adrian’s jaw tightened.

“Someone in my own house sent them,” he said quietly, and for the first time since the wedding, Amelia watched him look genuinely, completely afraid.

Amelia started at the card in his hand, the small embossed crest suddenly the most menacing thing she'd ever seen. “Who has access to something like that? Who could actually pull a team without you knowing?”

“Not many people.” Adrian's voice had gone flat, the way it always did when he was working hard to keep something from cracking open. “My father. The head of security himself. And a handful of family members with enough standing to request that look routine.”

“Delphine.”

He didn't answer, but he didn't need to. The name hung between them in the dark, heavier than anything either of them wanted to say out loud on the side of a wrecked road.

A second car finally pulled up being Adrian’s… Kingston Villa’s driver, sent belatedly, radio crackling with questions about the incident. Adrian waved him off with a sharp gesture, keeping Amelia close against his side.

“We're not calling this in,” he said quietly. “Not the accident, not the card. Not yet.”

“Adrian, someone just tried to run me off the road.”

“I know.” His grip on her tightened, as if the memory of the impact was still working its way through him too. “Which is exactly why we can't let whoever did this know we found this card. The moment they realize we know it was someone close to home, they'll cover their tracks, and we lose the only real lead we've had since this began.”

Amelia looked down at the wreckage of the car, then up at Adrian’s face, pale and set and furious in a way she hadn't seen from him before.

“Take me home,” she said quietly. “And then we find out exactly who inside that house wants me dead badly enough to send them after me.”

Adrian didn't let go of her hand the entire drive back.