Chapter 7

"You have twenty-four hours to pack."

My mother didn't look up from her coffee when she said it.

I was still holding a dish towel. "Pack?"

"Don't repeat me." She set her cup down. "Victor Blackthorn called this morning. Damien wants you at the estate by tomorrow evening. Your husband..." the word came out like something she'd stepped in "...doesn't believe in long engagements."

Husband.

I set the towel on the counter and didn't say anything else.

Twenty-four hours.

Isabella found me upstairs, stuffing cardigans into a bag I hadn't finished packing.

"He picked you because you're manageable." She leaned in the doorway, arms crossed. "Do you know what Victor said about you? That you don't resist anything. Not even when it hurts you."

Her gaze stayed on me. "You've always been like that. Even when we were younger. Always agreeing. Always disappearing."

I kept folding. "Maybe."

"Don't do that." Something shifted in her voice. Almost real. "Talk to me like a person."

I looked up.

"You didn't want him," I said.

Her jaw tightened. "That's not the point."

"Then what is?"

She walked in and picked up the silver bracelet from my nightstand. Turned it over once. Dropped it.

"The point is you're nothing. You've always been nothing. And somehow you get the Blackthorn name and I..." She stopped. "It's not fair."

"No," I said. "It's not."

She waited for more. When I didn't give her any she left, footsteps hard down the hall.

I picked the bracelet off the floor and put it in the bag.

Victor arrived at six to collect me personally. I hadn't expected that either.

He worked the room like he'd been doing it his whole life, though his fingers adjusted his cufflink twice before he reached my father. Shook his hand, kissed my mother's cheek, told Isabella she looked beautiful. Then he turned to me with a smile that was just warm enough to be convincing.

"Lila. We're so glad you're joining us."

My mother made a sound that wasn't quite agreement.

He insisted on carrying my bag. I let him, then wished I hadn't.

In the car he sat across from me, the partition up between us and the driver.

"You must have questions," he said.

"A few."

"Ask them."

"Will Damien be home when we arrive?"

"Of course." Victor smiled. "He's looking forward to it."

He held my gaze a beat too long. Not threatening. Just... deliberate.

"You're going to do very well in that house," he said. "I can already tell."

The smile held, but his eyes didn't stay on mine for long before shifting away.

"Thank you," I said, and kept my face blank.

The estate came through the trees twenty minutes later. Iron gates. The gates closed behind us with a metallic finality that felt louder than it should have been. Long drive. Three cameras before we even reached the front door one above the gate, one on the outer wall, one tucked in the hedge line where most people wouldn't look.

I looked.

I didn't ask questions. Questions made people answer in ways that revealed too much.

Victor talked the whole way inside. Dinner. Staff. My rooms. His voice never stopped moving and I let him fill the silence while I counted.

Damien was in the sitting room. Wheelchair. Dark jacket. He didn't look up when we walked in.

"Damien," Victor said. "She's here."

He set down his papers slowly, aligning them even though they were already straight. Then he looked at me — not like someone meeting a stranger, but like someone confirming something already known.

Same eyes as last night. Sharp. Unhurried.

"Lila," he said.

"Damien."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile.

"I'll have Mrs. Hale show you to your room," Victor started.

"I'd like to find it myself," I said.

A pause. Victor's smile didn't move. "Of course."

I picked up my own bag and walked toward the hallway.

I made it to the second corridor before I heard Victor's voice behind me, low and even.

"She's already clocking the cameras. Every single one."

A pause.

"Let her," Damien said.

I kept walking.

Mrs. Hale found me in the second corridor and led me to my room without saying much. Third floor. End of the hall. Clean, quiet, bigger than anything I'd ever slept in.

I set my bag down and stood in the middle of it for a moment.

That's when I saw it.

On the dresser. A single item, placed carefully in the center like it had been waiting.

A programme. Folded. The kind they hand out at small theatre productions.

I crossed the room and picked it up with fingers that had stopped working properly.

It was from a show I'd done fourteen months ago. A three-week run at a venue so small it didn't even have a proper website. A role I'd taken under Liora Vale before anyone knew that name.

My photo was on the inside page.

Not Lila. Liora. Hair down, chin up, the version of me this house was never supposed to see.

Someone had circled it in ink. Just once. Clean and deliberate.

No note. No name.

Just the circle.

I stood there holding it and the room felt suddenly smaller, the walls a little closer than they'd been a second ago.

He hadn't chosen me yesterday.

He'd chosen me a long time ago.