Chapter Twelve: Leaving Is Not An Option

Sophie Steele

"Miriam, listen to me carefully," I said into the phone, my bag already on my shoulder, my room already behind me. "Do not tell anyone where you're taking him. Not the address, not the area…Nothing."

"Already moving," Miriam replied. "We'll be out in twenty minutes."

"Good. Call me from a different number when you're settled."

I ended the call, dropped the phone into my bag, pulled the door shut behind me.

The corridor was quiet. Late afternoon light came through the narrow window at the end, pale, barely trying. My bag was packed, my car was arranged, the driver was waiting outside the east entrance. I had calculated the timing down to the hour. Leave before nightfall, before Dominic's deadline ran out, before whoever sent that message decided patience was no longer interesting.

Clean exit without encountering confrontation. No more of this house pulling me apart at the seams.

I walked.

Past the linen cupboard, past the bathroom I was never going near again in my life, down the turn in the corridor toward the main staircase.

And there he was.

Dominic stood at the top of the stairs with his jacket off, his sleeves pushed up, looking like a man who had been in the middle of something else entirely and had simply stopped. He was not blocking me. He was not planted in my path with his arms crossed performing an obstacle. He was just there, the way a wall is just there, not deliberately, just structurally, occupying the exact space I needed to move through.

I stopped.

"The deadline isn't up," he said.

"I've decided," I replied.

He looked at my bag. Then at my face. "You're running again."

Two words that should not have the weight they had. I felt them land in my chest, felt the exact spot they hit, because he knew where to aim, he had always known, even seven years ago when we were two people orbiting each other in this house he had known precisely which words would find me.

I set my bag down on the floor slowly.

"Don't do that," I told him.

"Do what."

"Frame leaving as a character flaw… I have a son, Dominic. Someone in this house knows where he lives. That's not running, that's me applying my sense."

He came down two steps. Not rushing, not performing urgency. Just closing distance the way he did everything, with intention.

"What someone?" he asked.

I looked at him for a moment. Then I reached into my bag, pulled my phone out, opened my camera roll, turned the screen toward him.

He took the phone. Not roughly. He just took it, the way he took things he considered relevant to him, which apparently now included my threatening messages. He read it, re-read it again. His jaw did something tight and brief. He scrolled up, checked the sender number, and scrolled back down.

When he looked up his expression was the same and completely different. The controlled surface was intact. But underneath it something had shifted into a register I recognised from the bathroom this morning, cold, focused, the particular quality of a man who was deciding what to do with his anger rather than feeling it at you.

He handed the phone back.

"When did this come?"

"This morning…before the burial." I put the phone away. "There was a second one after, which happened during the gathering."

"What did the second one say?"

"That the clock was running." I picked up my bag again. "Which is why I'm leaving."

"Sophie." He came down the last two steps. We were level now, close enough that I could see the exact line of tension running through his shoulders. "Whoever sent this is inside this house. You understand that."

"Yes. Which is why I'm leaving it."

"You leave now," he said, "you walk out alone into whatever they're planning next. You go back to Los Angeles, you think that's the end of it. It won't be."

"You don't know that."

"I know Gerald." He said the name plainly, like he had been carrying it in his mouth since the burial, waiting for the right moment to put it down. "I know how he operates. A message like this is not the whole move, it's the opening. You leave before he's finished, he finishes somewhere you have less control."

I stared at him. "You know it's Gerald."

"I know it's Gerald."

"Since when."

"Since the burial or maybe before." He held my gaze. "He had someone in this house reporting on you. He knew about Ethan before you arrived."

Something cold moved through me that had nothing to do with the corridor temperature. "How long has he known?"

"Three days, maybe four." Dominic's voice stayed level. "Long enough to prepare."

I put my bag down again. It hit the floor with a sound that felt like a decision.

"He's looking for Ethan," I said. Not a question.

"He made a call to your studio this morning." He watched my face. "Miriam?"

"Already moving him." I pressed two fingers against my mouth briefly, thinking. "Where, though? If Gerald has resources outside this house he can find wherever Miriam takes him eventually."

"Not if I send someone first." He pulled his phone from his pocket. "Someone Gerald has no line on."

I looked at him. At the phone in his hand, at the absolute steadiness of his expression, at the man who twenty-four hours ago I was treating as a problem to be managed. Now he was standing in a corridor offering to protect our son with a calm that made something in my chest shift.

"Who?” I asked.

"Rowan." He was already typing. "My second. Gerald has never successfully gotten inside Rowan's business. He'll go to LA tonight, stay with them until this is done."

"Ethan doesn't know him."

"Ethan will meet him." He looked up. "Unless you have a better option standing in front of you right now."

I did not.

I hated that I did not.

"You're not leaving," Dominic said again. The tone was different now. Not the flat statement from the stairs. This was quieter, less instruction, more something I didn't have a clean name for. "Not tonight…Not while Gerald is still making moves in this house."

I looked at my bag on the floor.

I looked at him.

My wolf had been silent through this entire exchange, not restless, not reacting to his proximity the way it had been since I arrived. Silent in the way it went silent when it had already made up its mind about something.

It was not giving me a single argument for leaving.

Not one.

"Fine," I said. "One more day."

Something moved briefly across his face. Relief, I thought. Or the controlled version of it.

He nodded. Typed something to Rowan, then put his phone away.

Then he bent down, picked up my bag from the floor, turned, walked back up the stairs with it like this was decided and he was simply handling the logistics now.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs watching him carry my bag back toward my room.

My phone buzzed.

Miriam's new number.

I picked it up immediately. "Tell me you're out."

"We're out," she said. Then a pause that lasted half a second too long. "Sophie. The man outside the building. He was here when we left."

My hand tightened on the phone. "What man?"

"He took a photo," Miriam said. "Of Ethan.”