CHAPTER FIVE — Rules of the Game

Ava's POV

I woke up at six forty-five to the sound of silence.

Not the comfortable kind either. The kind that sits on your chest and reminds you that everything familiar is gone. No leaky faucet dripping in the bathroom wall, no Mrs. Kowalski upstairs dragging furniture across her floor at ungodly hours, no distant rumble of the number nine bus that passed my street every morning like clockwork.

Just silence, and the faint sound of snow settling against glass.

I stared at the ceiling for a full minute before I remembered where I was.

Right. The manor. The contract. The husband I didn't want.

I sat up and pushed my hair out of my face. The room looked different in morning light, less intimidating than it had last night, almost soft with the gray winter glow coming through the window. My mind drifted back to dinner, to that strange warmth that had spread up my spine out of nowhere while I was sitting across from Damian. I had told myself it was the heating system in an unfamiliar house and I still believed that. Mostly. It was just that it had felt so specific, so sudden, like something switching on rather than something warming up.

I shook the thought off and looked out the window.

The garden below was completely buried in snow, smooth and unbroken except for a single set of footprints cutting across it in a straight, purposeful line toward the trees at the far edge of the property.

I pressed closer to the glass and squinted. The footprints were fresh, recent enough that the edges hadn't blurred yet. They led away from the house and disappeared into the tree line without coming back.

I watched the trees for a moment. Nothing moved.

I told myself it was probably Luca doing security rounds or something equally boring and logical, and went to get dressed.

Breakfast at seven meant I had fifteen minutes.

I found the kitchen by following the smell of coffee, which led me through two hallways and past a sitting room with furniture that looked too expensive to actually sit on. The kitchen itself was large and warm, all dark countertops and hanging copper pots and a window above the sink that looked out over the front drive.

Damian was already at the table.

He was dressed for the office, dark suit, no tie yet, a cup of coffee in one hand and his phone in the other. He looked up when I walked in, his eyes doing that quick assessment thing that I was already starting to recognize, like he was checking for something specific and filing the result away before I even finished walking through the door.

"You found it," he said.

"I followed the coffee." I went straight to the pot and poured myself a cup. "Good morning to you too."

He set his phone down. "Did you sleep?"

"Surprisingly yes." I sat across from him, wrapping both hands around the mug. "Your beds are unreasonably comfortable. It's almost offensive considering everything else about this situation."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile but close enough to be interesting. "I'll pass that along."

A woman I hadn't met yet appeared from a side door carrying a plate of toast and fruit. She set it between us without a word and disappeared again. I watched her go.

"How many people work here?" I asked.

"Enough."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the answer I'm giving." He picked up his phone again. "There's a schedule on the counter. Events we're expected to attend together over the next few weeks. I need you to look it over today."

I looked at the counter. A printed sheet sat beside a neat stack of envelopes. "Events like what?"

"A dinner with my board next Friday. A charity function the week after. Possibly a press appearance if the story hasn't died down by then."

"And we're supposed to what, hold hands and smile for cameras?"

"Essentially."

I pulled the schedule toward me and scanned it. Five events in the next three weeks, each one with a dress code listed beside it. Black tie. Business formal. Smart casual. I didn't own anything that fit any of those descriptions adequately and we both knew it.

"I don't have clothes for these," I said flatly.

"Claire will arrange a stylist."

"I don't need a stylist, I need a heads up and a reasonable budget."

He looked up from his phone. "The stylist is easier."

"For you maybe." I set the schedule down. "I'm not a doll, Damian. I can dress myself."

"I'm not suggesting you can't." His voice stayed even. "I'm suggesting that my world has a specific aesthetic and it will be easier for both of us if you don't have to navigate it alone."

I wanted to argue. The argument was already forming behind my teeth, something sharp and pointed about independence and dignity and the fact that I had been dressing myself successfully for twenty four years without any billionaire's input. But something in the way he said it stopped me. Not condescending. Just practical, like he was genuinely trying to make something easier rather than trying to control something.

I hated that the distinction mattered to me.

"Fine," I said. "But I have final approval on everything she picks."

He considered that for exactly one second. "Agreed."

We ate in silence for a few minutes. The toast was good, thick sourdough with butter that tasted like it came from somewhere that took butter very seriously. I ate more than I expected to, which was at least one thing going right this morning.

"The footprints," I said without planning to. "In the garden this morning. Where do they go?"

His hand stilled on his coffee cup. Just for a fraction of a second, barely noticeable, but I was looking directly at him and I noticed.

"Luca does a perimeter check every morning," he said. "Security."

"At six in the morning?"

"Threats don't keep business hours."

I looked at him. He was looking at his phone again, expression perfectly neutral, perfectly controlled. The same face he'd worn in his office when he slid the contract across the desk. Closed and deliberate and giving absolutely nothing away.

I let it go. For now.

Work felt like stepping into a different atmosphere entirely.

Petals, the flower shop and event planning studio where I had worked for three years, was warm and smelled like eucalyptus and fresh cut stems. It was small and slightly chaotic and completely mine in every way that the manor was not. I loved it the way you love the thing that keeps you sane.

Jamie was reorganizing the front display when I walked in and she turned around with the expression of someone who had been waiting very impatiently for a very long time.

"Finally." She pointed at me. "You. Talk. Now."

"Good morning Jamie, lovely to see you too."

"Ava Marie Cole." She abandoned the display entirely and followed me to the back. "I helped you pack your entire life into four boxes yesterday and you told me approximately nothing. I deserve information. I am owed information. I carried the heavy box with your books in it and my back has not forgiven me."

"You offered to carry that box."

"Under the assumption that you would compensate me with details." She handed me my apron. "So. The house. Is it as ridiculous as I'm imagining?"

"More."

Her eyes went wide. "More?"

"Jamie, there is a sitting room with furniture that I am genuinely afraid to touch. There are copper pots hanging in the kitchen. The dining table seats twenty people and last night there were two of us sitting at one end of it eating in near silence like characters in a period drama."

She pressed her hand over her mouth. "That's either the most depressing or most romantic thing I've ever heard."

"It's neither. It's just deeply weird." I started on the first arrangement of the morning, white lilies and dark greenery for a New Year's event pickup. "He's not what the articles make him look like."

"What does that mean?"

"It means he's complicated." I trimmed a stem. "And I don't know what kind of complicated yet."

Jamie leaned against the counter and watched me work with the look she got when she was deciding whether to push further or let something rest. She usually pushed.

"Did anything strange happen?" she asked. "Anything that felt off?"

I thought about the footprints in the snow. About the way his hand had stilled on his coffee cup when I mentioned them. About the warmth at the base of my spine that had appeared from nowhere at the dinner table and then disappeared just as quickly.

"Define strange," I said.

"Ava."

"Jamie," I parroted.

She gave me the look. I gave it back. We had been doing this particular standoff for three years and neither of us had ever fully won it.

"There were footprints," I said finally. "In the garden this morning. Fresh ones, going into the trees before six AM. He said it was his security guy doing rounds but something about the way he said it felt like a door closing."

Jamie was quiet for a moment. "What kind of footprints?"

"What do you mean what kind? Boot prints, in the snow, going toward the trees."

"I mean were they normal sized or…"

"Jamie, yes, they were normal sized human footprints, what else would they be?"

She shrugged with the expression of someone who had watched too many supernatural thrillers. "Just asking."

I shook my head and went back to my lilies. But the question sat in the back of my mind for the rest of the morning in a way I couldn't quite shake, which was annoying because it was a completely ridiculous question and I was a completely rational person.

They were just footprints.

Obviously.

The evening was quieter than I expected.

Damian was home by seven, which surprised me. I had imagined him as the type to work until midnight and communicate exclusively through assistants and printed schedules. Instead he appeared in the kitchen doorway at seven fifteen while I was attempting to make myself tea without disturbing anything that looked breakable.

"The kettle is the one on the left," he said.

I looked at the two kettles sitting side by side on the counter. "Why are there two kettles?"

"One is for coffee. One is for tea."

"That's excessive."

"That's preference." He moved past me to the refrigerator, close enough that I caught his scent briefly, something clean and dark and faintly woodsy that was completely at odds with the expensive suit. I stepped sideways without meaning to.

He noticed. Of course he noticed.

"I don't bite," he said, not looking at me, pulling a bottle of water from the fridge.

"I know that."

"You stepped away."

"I was giving you space to open the fridge."

He looked at me then, one eyebrow raised just slightly, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that he did not believe me even a little bit.

"There's a file on the library table," he said. "Press briefing notes for the board dinner next Friday. It would help if you read them before we go."

"So I know what to say?"

"So you know what not to say."

"Right." I poured my tea. "Anything else I should know? Secret handshakes, code words, topics that will make your board members combust?"

His mouth curved. That almost smile again. "Don't mention the Singapore deal."

"What's the Singapore deal?"

"Exactly."

He left the kitchen and I stood there with my tea, listening to his footsteps fade down the hallway, and tried to decide whether that almost smile meant he had a sense of humor buried somewhere underneath all that control, or whether I was just desperately looking for something human in a man who seemed determined not to show any.

I went to bed at ten and lay in the dark staring at the ceiling of a room that still didn't feel like mine.

The warmth came back briefly, just for a moment, low at the base of my spine like an ember catching. Then it was gone.

I pulled the blanket up and told myself firmly that I needed to drink less coffee before bed.

It was definitely the coffee.