~ 4

Chapter 4

~ Natalie ~

The door burst open hard enough to rattle the windows — and me.

Allie stormed in. The dreamy smile was gone. Her robe hung half-tied, her face was blotchy with tears and anger, and she walked straight past me to her suitcase and started throwing clothes into it.

"Allie?" I sat up fast. "What are you doing?"

"Leaving." Her voice was rough from crying. "Tonight. Right now. I'm getting out of this house."

"Wait… just breathe for a second…"

"Breathe?" She spun on me. "I slept with a stranger who let me believe he was someone else, Natalie! Do you have any idea how that feels?"

"I know. I know, but…"

"You don't know!" She slammed her makeup bag into the suitcase. "I put on lace. I walked to his room like a lovesick fool. And the whole time — the whole time — he knew exactly what I thought, and he said nothing." Her voice cracked. "He let me embarrass myself for fun. That's all I am to people like this. Fun."

"Allie, it's one in the morning…"

"I'll get an Uber to the gate. I'll walk if I have to." She yanked the zipper shut. "I am not staying under this roof."

"Please. Just until morning…"

"Why?" She finally looked at me, and the hurt in her eyes emptied me out. "So I can sit through their big Solstice feast tomorrow, across the table from him? Watch him wink at me in front of half the city like I'm a joke he told once? No. I can't. I can't."

"You didn't do anything wrong. He used you. He's the…"

"It doesn't matter who the bad guy is!" she shouted. "It matters that I feel like trash, and every second in this house makes it worse!" She grabbed the suitcase handle. Then her voice dropped, and what she said next landed like a slap. "Enjoy the vacation, Natalie."

"Allie…"

"Don't try to stop me."

I followed her into the hallway anyway, still begging. "At least wait until you're calmer. You're deciding while you're angry…"

"Good," she snapped, not slowing down. "Angry is the only smart thing I've felt all night."

We reached the top of the grand staircase.

And the world stopped.

Down on the landing, half-hidden in shadow, my sister was pressed against the wall — and one of the twins was pressed against her. His hands were buried in her hair. Her leg was hooked around his waist. They were kissing in a way that had nothing to do with family.

Allie's suitcase hit the floor with a crack.

They broke apart. Fanny's face went white as bone. The twin — wearing different clothes than either brother had worn tonight — stepped back, calm as anything, and ran a hand through his hair.

"Oh my God." Allie's voice came out hollow. "Oh my God."

"Allie…" Fanny started.

"Which one is that?" Allie let out a thin, shaky laugh, one breath away from hysteria. "Nikolai or Niklaus? Because I honestly can't tell anymore — and clearly, in this house, IT DOESN'T MATTER!"

The twin said nothing. He gave Fanny one long, unreadable look — then turned and walked away down the hall, unhurried, like a man leaving a meeting.

"Unbelievable." Allie grabbed her suitcase and ran down the stairs, the wheels banging on every step. "Your sister lands the father and keeps a son on the side. Twelve days before the wedding. In his own house." At the front door she turned, one hand on the latch, mascara streaking her cheeks — and her eyes flicked to me with one last, terrible message: and you two are the ones hiding something. "Good luck with your new family, Natalie. I hope it's worth what it's going to cost you."

The door boomed shut behind her.

I stood frozen on the staircase.

"Natalie." Fanny came up the stairs toward me, small-voiced, hands out. "Please. It isn't what you think…"

"You were kissing him." My voice came out sharp as a knife. "What else could it possibly be?"

"It's complicated…"

"Complicated?" The laugh that came out of me was ugly. "You're marrying Jeremy. His ring, his name, his house. And you have your leg around his son on his own staircase. So which one was it? Nikolai? Niklaus?"

Her eyes flew wide. "Wait… how do you know about Niklaus?" Her voice jumped. "Is he back?"

The change in her was so sudden it threw me. "Yes," I said slowly, watching her face, listening to her heartbeat climb. "He's back. He spent the evening with Allie. She thought he was Nikolai."

Fanny stared at me.

Then she laughed.

"Oh, that's perfect," she gasped. "Oh, I knew it. I knew Nikolai would never look at someone like Allie."

Ice went straight down my spine.

"So it was Nikolai," I said quietly. "On the landing just now. You were kissing Nikolai."

The laughter died in her throat. I watched her replay her own words. Watched her realize what she'd just handed me.

"I…" She straightened up and smoothed her dress.

And that's when my nose finally did its job.

He was all over her. Under her perfume, under her own skin — him. Cedar and clean sweat. And not in one fresh layer, either. It was worked into her, old traces underneath new ones, like coat after coat of paint.

The staircase wasn't one moment of madness.

This had been going on.

"Don't." Her voice changed completely. The pleading was gone. The softness was gone. What was left was cold and businesslike. "Whatever speech you're about to give me, Natalie, swallow it."

"Fanny…"

"Jeremy is moving the small ceremony up. Private vows on New Year's Eve, big wedding in spring." She came up one more step, close enough that I could hear every steady, shameless beat of her heart, close enough to see exactly how little fear was in her eyes. "So here is what you're going to do with all that anger. Nothing."

"Or what?"

"Or I make one phone call." She said it lightly. Sweetly, even. "One anonymous little call to a certain man back home. With a city and a street name in it. You remember Roman, don't you? Of course you do. You still check the locks twice every night."

The floor seemed to tilt under me. "You wouldn't. He's hunting you…"

"He wanted me first," she agreed. "But you know how he feels about loose ends. And you'd be such a loose end, all alone out there." She smiled — the same bright smile from the porch steps, the one that hurt to look at. "We disappeared together, little sister. We stay disappeared together. Ruin this for me, and I promise you — only one of us will still be hidden by spring."

"What's going on out here?"

We both spun around.

Jeremy stood at the top of the stairs in his pajamas, silver hair a mess, blinking down at us with sleepy concern. "It's two in the morning. Why are you both up?"

Everything I knew sat burning on my tongue. Your fiancée. Your son. The landing. It's been going on for weeks, Jeremy. One sentence. It would only take one sentence.

And one phone call to end me.

Fanny's eyes found mine. The warning in them was quiet, and total.

I said nothing.

"The gatehouse called up," Jeremy said, coming down toward us, frowning. "They said Allie just left with her suitcase. Alone. On foot. What happened? Is she alright?"

And then I watched a master at work.

"Oh, it's awful," Fanny said, her voice melting instantly into warm, worried sympathy. "Her mother called — her heart, they think. Allie felt terrible about leaving in the middle of the night. She kept apologizing. You know how family emergencies are."

Smooth. Seamless. Not one crack showing — and not one flicker in her pulse. For half a second, even I almost believed her. And I'd watched the truth walk out the front door.

"Poor girl." Jeremy's face folded with real concern. "We should have driven her — the coast road at this hour—"

"She insisted on going alone. She's stubborn that way."

I stood there watching my sister lie to the man she was going to marry without her heart skipping a single beat, and sixteen years of memories came crashing down on me.

I was twelve when the crash happened. She was fifteen.

Her mother had married my father barely a year before — two widowed wolves in a bad part of a worse city, tying two broken little families into one. Her mother died on impact. My father held on until morning — long enough for a human hospital, human machines, human doctors frowning at readings that made no sense, while we stood there praying no one looked too closely at his blood.

Take care of each other, he whispered, his eyes moving between us. You're sisters now. In this world, you'll only ever have each other.

And then, to Fanny, You've always been so good to Natalie. Promise me you'll look after her.

I said nothing. Nothing about the three years of quiet cruelty she'd already spent on me. Nothing about how I'd learned to smile through it, just to keep the peace in a house too small for war.

I let my father die believing in a daughter who didn't exist.

The lawyer read the will at his bedside. His small savings, split between the two of us, locked in trust until Fanny turned eighteen.

Three years later, she sat me down with wet eyes and a trembling mouth. The lawyers vanished, Natalie. They took everything. There's nothing left.

I knew she was lying. I could hear it in her pulse. I could smell it on her skin, the way you smell rain coming. But I was fifteen and powerless, and the money was simply gone. Along with the last of her pretending.

Then, years later, Roman noticed her at a market on the wrong side of town. And for once in her life, her lies weren't big enough to save her — so we ran. Both of us. Together. Because that was the one true thing my father ever got out of her: together.

I had spent years believing that word meant something.

"Natalie?"

Jeremy's voice pulled me back. He was studying my face, kind and worried. "You've gone pale. Are you alright?"

"Fine," I managed. "Just worried about Allie."

"Of course." His hand settled on my shoulder, warm and heavy. "Get some rest. Today is a marathon — the feast, then the ball. Half the city in this house." He smiled. "I want it to feel like home for you."

My phone went off in my pocket, loud in the quiet.

I grabbed for it like a drowning woman. 

"I should take this. It's work."

Jeremy's brows drew together. "At two in the morning? During the holidays?"

"Apparently," I said, backing toward the hallway, the phone buzzing against my palm.

Because here's the thing about my boss.

Adam never called with good news.

And in three months, he had never once called at night.