《My fiance's uncle's property 》全部章節：第 11 章 - 第 17 章

Eveline.Linda's smile snaps back into place the second the handshake ends, like a blind pulled shut. "Dinner's this way," she says, already turning, already performing hostess. "Eveline, darling, you look thin. Are you eating enough over there?""I'm eating fine, Linda."“And how's Harold doing? I've not seen you since the engagement party and we haven't gotten the chance to talk. Not that I know why you left abruptly that night” she says, her voice slowly shifting from concern, almost to anger.“Harold is getting better, Jen is there with him, he is well taken care of. Thank you for your care Linda.” I say, ignoring the other things cause I'm not in the mood for long talks.Julian's hand finds the small of my back, steering me toward the dining room, and I let him, because that's the choreography we've rehearsed for months. Perfect couple. Perfect distance. Lucian's eyes find mine over Julian's shoulder for exactly one second, giving me a realistic look.At least now he knows that

*Ten years earlier.*Lucian.James finds me in the records annex at half past ten at night, which is exactly the kind of hour James Hart operates in — after the Institute has gone quiet enough that nobody notices who's still walking its halls."You look terrible," he mutters, which is rich, coming from a man who hasn't slept properly in a month by the look of him. Grey under his eyes. A folder pressed flat against his side like it might try to leave if he loosened his grip."Long shift." I don't look up from the chart I'm reviewing. Second-year resident work, the kind nobody remembers doing once they're a surgeon, but somebody has to chase the paperwork the attendings won't. "What's wrong?""Why does something have to be wrong?" He shots back at me, almost defensive."Because you're here at ten thirty holding that folder like it's radioactive, and you've been doing this for a month. Sit down, James. You're making me tired just watching you."He sits. Doesn't open the folder yet. That

***Present day***Julian.The study door swings all the way open under my hand, and both of them go still.My mother pouring wine into her glass, my father mid-sentence, the kind of stillness that doesn't belong to an ordinary conversation about caterers or seating charts.I didn't catch all of it. Fragments, mostly, I couldn't get everything they were talking about — listing... buyer... She stopped asking questions.My mother's voice, flat and administrative, the tone she uses for anything she doesn't want to sound as important as it is. I know when she sounds like that, like she's the one in authority.My father, quieter, saying something I don't fully catch about ‘James’?None of it makes sense fast enough to hold onto. Them looking as shocked as this, gives me all I need to know.They didn't expect anyone to be listening to their conversation, even though I didn't get all of it. I got most of it. I file it as background noise — after seeing their reaction, the way you do with ha

***Present day.***Eveline.I hang up the phone and sit very still in the dark of my room, Julian's voice still ringing somewhere behind my ribs. *I need to see you.**I have something to tell you. About your father.*Not Harold. He said father, not Uncle Harold, not any of the careful, deliberate phrasing everyone in my life has learned to use around the word dad since I was twelve years old and the man who gave it meaning stopped being there to answer to it.He meant James.I turn the phone over in my hands like it might tell me something the call didn't. Julian doesn't call at midnight. Julian doesn't call sounding like that — unsteady, stripped of the practiced ease he wears at every family dinner like a second skin. Something happened at that house tonight. Something after we left, something in that study I caught half a glimpse of through the open door on our way out.Linda and Adrian's voices dropping the second they registered Lucian's footsteps in the hall.I should be tur