Chapter Thirty-one: Close

Sophie Steele"Put the phone down," I said.Dominic looked at me, the screen still lit in his hand."Helena's statement can't be stopped tonight," I told him. "Lena can't stop it, you can't stop it, going back upstairs to make calls won't stop it. It's done." I held his gaze. "Whatever damage it does, we deal with it in the morning."He looked at the phone for a long moment. Then he set it face down on the counter."Okay," he said.The kitchen settled back into its quiet, alongside its amber light and the abandoned mug, plus the two of us, still close, neither of us having moved the distances we'd closed in the last half hour.I slid off the counter, moved to the small sofa along the kitchen's far wall, the one the staff used on long shifts. Old, worn at the armrests, the kind of furniture that had absorbed enough years to become comfortable in the way only old things could.I sat, and drew my legs up beneath me.After a moment, Dominic moved the armchair from the corne

Chapter Thirty-two: Ethan's Dream

Ethan's POV"Miriam," I said, before I even properly opened my eyes. "I had the dream again."I heard her put something down in the kitchen. Her footsteps came across the floor, then she sat on the edge of my bed the way she always did when I had something important to tell her, which meant she was taking it seriously, which was one of the things I liked best about Miriam."Tell me," she said.I sat up. My pyjamas had twisted around in the night, the way they did when I moved a lot in my sleep, which Miriam said meant I was dreaming very hard, which sounded right."The big house," I said. "The one with all the rooms. I was there again.""The same house as before?” "Yes. The grey walls. The big windows. The garden outside that goes on for ages." I pulled my knees up to my chest, thinking about it carefully, because the dream had felt important in the way some dreams felt important and I wanted to describe it correctly. "But this time I went into the forest."Miriam w

Chapter Thirty-three: Gerald's Next Move

Gerald Steele"It went poorly," Aldric said over the phone, with the tone of a man stating something he considered obvious."It went as it went," I replied. "Which is a different thing."A pause. "Dominic had documentation, Gerald. Payment records, names, dates. He laid it in front of the council like a case file. Castellan looked at me for the rest of that meeting like he was revising thirty years of opinion.""Castellan revising an opinion is not the same as Castellan changing a vote," I said. I was at the desk in the room I used when I stayed at the villa, the door closed, a glass of water untouched beside me. "There is a significant distance between discomfort and action.""Perhaps," Aldric said. "But the motion won't pass now. Not this week. Not with the council in this state.""The formal motion was always one instrument," I said. "Not the only one."Silence on his end. Aldric was old enough, sharp enough, to understand what I meant without requiring elaboration.

Chapter Thirty-four: Sophie Finds Out Gerald Is Looking for Ethan

Sophie Steele"Sophie." Lena's voice came through the door before her knock finished. "Now, please."I was already moving before she pushed the door open, something in her tone cutting through the tired fog of the morning, sharpening everything instantly.She stepped inside, closed the door behind her, phone in hand, screen facing me."Someone made an inquiry this morning," she said, without preamble. "Through a private research service. Background check request on a woman connected to your LA address. Full name, employer registration, current location." She turned the screen fully toward me. "The name they used to identify her was yours. They linked it to an assistant."I stared at the screen. I read it once and read it again."Miriam," I said."Yes.""This came through Gerald's network.""Not directly," Lena replied. "One step removed, same structure he used with Erik. A contact he keeps at a distance so the line stays clean. But the request pattern matches, t

Chapter Thirty-five: Dominic and Rowan Move

Dominic Steele"Get on a flight," I told Rowan. "Earliest available. Not commercial, take the charter.""Already looking," Rowan replied. "There's one out in ninety minutes. I can make it.""Take it." I was already at the desk, pulling up the council contact list on my laptop, one hand on the phone, the other moving through files. "The photograph at the front desk. Did Miriam describe whoever left it?""The staff at the desk said it was a courier. Uniformed, had a delivery log. It looked completely legitimate.""Which means it was arranged in advance," I said. "Before Miriam moved. Someone had the secondary address before we thought they did.""That's what I'm thinking," Rowan said. "Gerald's contact is better than we assessed.""Or Helena gave it to him," I said. "She was at the gate two days ago. She could have had people positioned in LA before she came here."A pause. "That's a longer game than we thought she was playing.""Yes," I said. "Go…Call me when you lan

Chapter Thirty-six: Rowan Meets Ethan

Rowan Ashby"You're late," Miriam said, opening the door before I'd finished knocking."The flight had a ground hold," I told her. "Twenty minutes. I made up most of it."She looked at me with the particular assessment of a woman deciding in real time whether I was going to be useful or a problem. It lasted about four seconds. Then she stepped back, let me in, closed the door behind me with the quiet efficiency of someone who had been managing difficult situations for long enough that even the door-closing was deliberate."The new address is clean," she said, moving immediately to the kitchen counter where a folder sat open. "I swept the lobby myself this morning. No one in the building knew us, so we checked in under my sister's name. The photograph of the situation at the last building, I've already reported to Dominic's contact." She turned. "No one approaches this boy without going through me first. That's been true for six years, it's true now.""Noted," I sai