Chapter 4: The Car At The Door

Lydia's promise followed me through the chaos of the ballroom like a cold hand resting on the back of my neck, and by the time the paramedics rushed in with their stretcher, I had already understood that whatever she planned to do at the hospital, she had probably started planning it long before tonight. I stayed where I was, listening to the guests whisper behind their hands and watching my mother stroke Lydia's hair as though it were the only thing left in the world worth protecting. I told myself that fear was only dangerous when I let it make my decisions for me.

The paramedics lifted Lydia onto the stretcher with careful hands, and she let her head roll to one side, one slender wrist dangling over the edge. She was good at this. Even knowing the truth, I could see how easily anyone would believe she was dying. My mother climbed in beside her without so much as a glance in my direction, and my father followed them to the doors before he stopped and turned around. The look he gave me made it clear that I was not being offered a choice.

"You are coming with us," he said. "If you are so eager for tests and proof, you can stand in that hospital and listen to the doctors tell you what you did. The car is already waiting outside."

"Miss Tessa will go to the hospital, as she herself proposed," Elias said calmly, stepping forward before I could answer. "But she will not go alone, and she will not go with you, Mr. Halvorsen."

"And who is going to stop me from taking my own daughter?"

"I will," said a voice from the doorway.

A man I had not noticed before stepped out of the shadows of the hall, and the nearest guests moved aside for him without being asked.

He was broad-shouldered and somewhere in his fifties, with gray at his temples, a thin scar cutting through his left eyebrow, and the kind of stillness that comes from spending a lifetime standing between other people and harm. I knew his face before I remembered his name. Hollis Grant had been my grandfather's personal bodyguard for twenty-two years, the man who walked one step behind Grandpa Walter at every meeting, every funeral, and every storm. I had met him only once, when I was seven years old and he carried me on his shoulders through a village fair without saying a single word. I never imagined he would remember it.

He stopped in front of me and bowed his head, a small, formal movement that made the whole room go quiet. "My lady," he said.

I almost looked behind me to see who he was talking to. In eighteen years, I had been called "that girl," "the one from the countryside," and "Tessa, behave yourself," but never anything that sounded like respect. Something warm and unfamiliar caught in my chest, and I had to look down at the floor for a moment before I trusted my voice.

"Mr. Grant," I managed. "You don't have to call me that."

"Mr. Walter's final instruction was that wherever you go, I go," he said, his voice low and steady. "I have served this family for twenty-two years, and tonight I serve you. As of nine o'clock, the estate that pays my wages belongs to you, so it is not a matter of choice for either of us."

"My lady?" my father said with a short, disbelieving laugh. "She is eighteen years old. She has never run so much as a lemonade stand."

"She is the majority shareholder of your company," Hollis said without raising his voice, and my father fell silent as though the words had struck him across the face.

"Mr. Walter wished for her to be protected, and I intend to honor that. If you want to take a car to the hospital, Mr. Halvorsen, then please do. My lady will travel with me."

I could feel Elias watching me, waiting to see what I would choose. My father's jaw was clenched so tightly that I thought it might crack, but he turned on his heel and strode out to the driveway, because the alternative was to argue with two men in front of two hundred guests who were already gossiping about him. Hollis offered me his arm, stiff and formal, the way he might have offered it to my grandfather, and I took it with a hand that was not quite steady.

Outside, the night air was cold against my bare arms. The ambulance was already pulling away, its lights painting the white stone of the mansion in pulses of red, and Callum stood on the steps with his hands shoved into his pockets, looking like he wanted to say something and had no idea how to begin. He glanced at me, then at our father, and then he turned and climbed into the back of the car without a word. I told myself it did not hurt. It hurt only a little.

My father's black SUV waited at the bottom of the steps with its engine running, and Dolores, the maid, was hurrying across the gravel with a coat she must have grabbed from somewhere. She pressed it into my hands without meeting my eyes.

"It's cold, miss," she whispered, and then she was gone before I could thank her.

"My lady," Hollis said quietly, "before you get into any vehicle tonight, I would like to examine it. It is a habit, and a procedure."

"This is ridiculous," my father snapped from the car door. "It's my car. My driver checked it this afternoon."

Hollis didn't answer him. He only waited, polite and immovable, and I opened my mouth to tell him it was fine, that I would ride with Elias and we would meet them there.

That was when the world flashed white again.

It lasted less than a second, but I saw it perfectly: a thin black cable beneath the car, frayed at the end where someone's cutters had bitten through it, and a dark stain of fluid spreading across the gravel under the sedan's belly. My breath caught in my throat, and the ground seemed to tilt under my feet.

"Mr. Grant," I said, and my voice sounded strange even to me. "Look underneath the car. Please. Look at the brakes."

My father frowned. "What nonsense is this now?"

Hollis dropped to one knee on the gravel, pulling a small flashlight from his jacket, and the beam slid along the chassis in a slow, careful line. For a long moment, nobody spoke, and I could hear nothing except the faint tick of the cooling engine and my own heartbeat. Then the light stopped moving, and Hollis was very still, in a way that made my stomach turn to ice.

He rose slowly and looked straight at my father.

"Mr. Halvorsen," he said, "someone has cut the brake line on this car."

My father's face went gray. "That's impossible. My driver..."

"It was cut cleanly, and not long ago," Hollis said. "The fluid is still dripping." He turned to me, and the calm in his voice did nothing to hide the cold anger underneath it. "My lady, this was the only car your father arranged for tonight, and it was meant to carry you to the hospital."