Chapter Two: Caught
936 Words
~Cole~
I had known for exactly forty-three minutes that they were here.
My property manager had sent me a notification the moment the spare key was used. I'd been in the middle of a call in London — a merger discussion that had been dragging on for two hours — and I'd wrapped it up in ten minutes flat, rerouted my flight, and been in the air before either of them had finished unpacking.
I told myself it was about the house. About principle.
I told myself a lot of things on that flight.
Sienna was staring at me from across the room like she was trying to calculate exactly how much trouble she was in. She knew that look on my face. She'd been reading it since she was eight years old and had broken my mother's favourite vase and tried to blame it on the family dog.
My gaze moved to Nadia.
Nadia Brennan didn't calculate. She didn't freeze or fidget or search for an exit. She just stood there with her ginger hair loose around her shoulders and those sharp green eyes already narrowing into the expression she kept specifically for me. Like I was a problem she had already decided she was going to win.
Three years of that look. Three years of her walking into rooms and making them immediately more difficult to be in.
"Sienna." I kept my voice even. "Would you like to explain what you're doing in my house without my permission?"
Sienna opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
She did that when she'd genuinely overstepped — that particular silence where she knew an excuse wouldn't hold and hadn't yet decided whether to try one anyway.
"Don't look at me like that," Nadia said. Her voice was controlled and flat. But her jaw was tight. "I didn't know this was your house until we were already standing in it."
"Is that right."
"Yes. That is right."
I tilted my head slightly. "And once you found out?"
"I said we should leave." She held my gaze without blinking. "Your sister had other ideas."
"Nadia, stop." Sienna shook herself loose and stepped forward. "Cole, this is entirely on me. She had nothing to do with the planning. I didn't tell her whose house this was until we were already here."
I looked between them.
Three years of watching my sister slowly become louder, more impulsive, less careful — and this woman standing across from me had been present for every single step of that journey. Standing right beside her. Encouraging it with that easy confidence she wore like a second skin.
"You always have a reason," I said to Nadia.
Something flashed behind her eyes. Sharp and fast.
"And you always have someone to blame," she said quietly.
The air in the room shifted in a way that made Sienna glance between us with the expression of someone watching a fuse burn down and not knowing whether to blow it out or step back.
"Maybe," Nadia continued, one slow step forward, "if you weren't so focused on controlling everything around you, your sister would have simply asked. Did that thought ever find its way into your head?"
My jaw tightened.
I was aware of the exact distance between us. Six feet. Maybe slightly less.
"Careful," I said softly.
"Or what?" She tilted her chin up just enough to make her point. "You'll blame me for this too? Add it to the list?"
"Cole." Sienna pressed her hand lightly to my arm. "Please. It was me. All of it. Don't take it somewhere it doesn't need to go."
I looked at my sister. She had that expression she'd been using on me since childhood — the one that said she knew she'd done something wrong and was asking me, quietly, not to make it bigger than it needed to be.
I exhaled slowly.
"You're both staying," I said.
Nadia blinked. Just once. But I caught it — that flicker of surprise she hadn't managed to keep off her face in time.
"I have business here through the weekend," I continued, looking at Sienna and not at Nadia. "After that, the house is yours for the rest of the month. We'll talk later." I looked at my sister directly. "You and I."
I picked up my jacket from the chair and walked down the hall without waiting for a response.
Behind me I heard Sienna exhale — long and relieved.
I didn't hear anything from Nadia.
I didn't need to.
I could feel her watching me all the way to the end of the hall. That particular kind of attention that had weight to it, even from across a room.
---
I sat at the desk in my room and opened my laptop.
The Barcelona acquisition files were pulled up in front of me. Numbers, projections, meeting notes from this morning's session. Everything that should have been occupying my full attention.
I stared at them without reading a single word.
I had built three companies from the ground up. I had walked into boardrooms full of men twice my age and won. I had made decisions worth hundreds of millions of dollars without losing a night's sleep.
And yet I had rerouted an international flight because a notification told me Nadia Brennan was sleeping under my roof.
I closed the laptop.
Three years of telling myself that the irritation I felt around her was exactly that — irritation. Nothing else. Nothing worth examining.
The city outside my window had gone dark and quiet.
I was not entirely sure I believed myself anymore.
- Writer
