ANMELDENEden's POVMichael picked up on the second ring. "You alone?""I'm alone." I'd taken the stairs down to the wine cellar, the one room in the estate I trusted to be free of cameras, a holdover from when Daddy still kept his oldest bottles somewhere even his own family couldn't watch him visit. "Tell me.""It's not nothing." His voice had lost the careless edge he usually wore, the one he'd built fast in the weeks since he'd talked his way into this family with a body on a church floor as his entry fee. "Greta's been receiving wire transfers. Small ones, broken up so they don't trip anything automatic. Six deposits over the last month, each one under the reporting limit.""From who?""That's the part that took me longer than it should have." A pause, the sound of papers shifting somewhere on his end. "The account routes through three shells before it lands anywhere traceable. But I followed it back far enough to get a name on the original transfer. Daniel Cross."The name didn't mean an
Silas's POVI found Felix in the east wing gym at midnight, working the heavy bag with the kind of focus he usually reserved for nothing in his life. No music, no audience, and no joke loaded and ready for whoever walked in. Just him and the bag and the dull, heavy sound of his fists landing again and again until his knuckles were raw against the tape."You're going to break your hands," I said.He didn't stop. "Wouldn't be the worst thing that happened to me this week."I leaned against the doorframe and waited him out. Felix had never been able to keep punishing himself in silence once someone was watching. It was the one tell he couldn't smooth over with charm, the one place the mask actually slipped.He stopped eventually, breathing hard, sweat soaking through his shirt, and turned to face me with something close to defiance in his eyes, like he already knew what conversation I'd come to have and wanted to get ahead of it."You're here about Greta.""I'm here about Greta.""Then s
Felix's POVI went back three days later with nothing in my hands. No folder, no coffee, no reason I could point to if anyone asked why I kept finding excuses to cross that bridge. I'd run out of gifts that let me avoid actually showing up as myself, and some part of me understood, even before I knocked, that today was the day I didn't get to hide behind one.Greta opened the door without the chain this time. She looked at my empty hands, then at my face, and something in her expression settled, like she'd been waiting to see if I'd come without an offering attached."No folder today," she said."No folder today.""Come in, then." She stepped back, and I followed her into the kitchen, where the same table sat between us, bare now except for two mugs she filled without asking if I wanted one. She set mine down across from her and sat, folding her hands in front of her like she was preparing for something neither of us had said out loud yet."I want to talk about the room," she said.I
Greta's POVI read through the folder twice after he left, sitting at the kitchen table with the coffee going cold beside me, and both times I came away thinking the same thing. It was good. Thorough. The kind of work that took real hours, real contacts, and real effort to put together, and none of it would have done him any good if I'd refused to take it.That was the part that kept catching in my chest. He hadn't needed me to take it. He could have left it on the porch and walked away with his conscience clear, and instead he'd stood in my kitchen looking like a man waiting for a verdict he wasn't sure he deserved.I'd spent two years learning to read men who wanted something from me. It was a skill you picked up fast in witness protection, in the years before that, and in every house that ever called itself temporary. You learned to clock the moment a kindness turned into a debt, the second a favor became a hook you'd spend months trying to work free of. Felix had never struck me a
Felix's POVI didn't say much on the drive back. Eden noticed. She noticed everything now, some sharpened instinct she'd picked up since the church, since she'd learned what it cost to make the hard calls herself. But she didn't push, not right away. She just watched the city slide past the window and let me have the silence for a few miles before she finally broke it."You're quiet," she said."I'm always quiet when I'm driving; it helps me think.""You never think when you're driving. You sing along to whatever's on the radio and tell me terrible jokes." She turned her head, studying me in that way she had now, like she was cataloguing something for later. "Something's wrong.""Nothing's wrong.""Felix.""I said nothing's wrong." I didn't mean for it to come out as sharp as it did, and I caught the way she went still beside me, surprised, because I never snapped at anyone. Ease was the whole point of me. Ease was the costume that let me move through this family without anyone asking
Greta's POVI'd had two years to get good at reading men like Felix Schmidt. Foster homes did that to you, and then witness protection did the rest, teaching you to clock the exact moment a man's smile turned into a leash. Felix's smile hadn't changed since the basement. That was the problem. He still thought he was the one in control of this conversation."Are you going to let us in, or are we doing this on the porch?" he asked, hands in his pockets, easy as anything."We're doing this wherever you're standing, because you're not coming inside." I kept the door at half-width, my body filling the rest of the gap. "Say what you came to say."His eyes flicked past me into the hallway, cataloging old habits, probably, the kind you don't shut off even when you're trying to be charming. "We need to talk about relocating you. Somewhere further out. New papers, a new face if you want one. Clean start.""No.""Greta—""I said no." I didn't raise my voice. I'd learned that screaming gave men l
Luca’s POVThe penthouse of the Grand Regency felt like a gilded cage. It was the kind of place my father sent people when he wanted them out of his sight but still under his thumb. As I stood in the foyer, the scent of expensive lilies and stale gin hit me, a fragrance that had become Lilian’s sig
Eden’s POVThe morning air in the master wing was quiet. I stepped out of Daniel’s room wearing nothing but a man’s white shirt he had left for me, the scent of cedar and powder clinging to the shirt. I felt different. The weight of his presence in the bed next to me all night, even without a touch
Daniel’s POVThe basement of my estate did not smell like the rest of the house. Upstairs, there was the scent of beeswax, old money, and Eden’s floral perfume. Down here, behind the soundproofed steel door, the air was cold, sterile, and smelled faintly of copper and industrial cleaner.It was a p
Daniel's POVI slept like a fucking baby. No nightmares, just black, heavy sleep that knocked me out cold the second my head hit the pillow.Which was ironic, considering the chaos that had detonated in my head the night before. And then I woke up to a hard dick, like I was some sort of teenager. I







