My Fiance's Uncle's Property

Chapter eleven

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 the night we met was my engagement night.

The dining room is filled with candlelight and old silver — the kind of luxury fitting for royalties, a table long enough for twelve sets for six. At the head of it, a wheelchair.

Adrian Vale.

Up close he has Lucian's jaw — the jawline Julian didn't get, and none of Julian's ease, like someone folded the same face along a harder line.

His hands rest still on the arms of the chair — the kind of stillness that's been trained into them.

Soup arrives. Small talk limps along. Then the staff clears the bowls, and Linda lifts her glass.

"We should toast," she says, "to Lucian. For saving Harold. And for finally coming home."

Home lands strange in this room, like it doesn't fit the furniture.

Adrian doesn't lift his glass. He's looking at Lucian across the table, and something moves behind his face that isn't warmth and isn't the death stare Linda gave at the door. Something closer to fear wearing a dinner jacket.

He doesn't look happy. Why invite us to dinner then?!

Gosh!

"Lucian's always been good in an emergency," Adrian says. Flat. "Consistent, at least."

"Adrian." Linda's voice carries an edge under the sugar.

"What? I'm complimenting him." Adrian's water glass trembles slightly on its way up. "Ten years is a long emergency, though. What kept you?"

The table goes quiet the way rooms go quiet when everyone already knows the answer and nobody's allowed to say it.

"Work," Lucian says. Even. "The kind that doesn't wait for family dinners."

"Mm." Adrian sets the glass down without drinking. "Must be nice. Having somewhere else to be."

"Adrian." Sharper now, almost like she's keeping him from saying too much.

"I'm making conversation, Linda. It's what people do at dinners." His eyes stay locked on Lucian. "We're all very good at pretending to do normal things in this family."

And then his hands stop being still.

He grips the arms of the chair and pushes himself forward, an inch, two, like something in him has decided the distance across this table isn't safe anymore.

"Why are you really back, Lucian?" His voice climbs, cracks at the edge. "To finish it? Is that it? You couldn't manage it the first time, so you came home to try again?"

"Adrian—" Linda's on her feet.

"Everyone sits here acting like I don't know what happened on that road." His hand shakes now, properly, glass forgotten.

"He was in that car with me. He wanted me gone. Ten years I've sat in this chair because of him, and he walks back in here like he's owed a parade!"

Julian's face has gone the color of the tablecloth. "Dad—"

"Ask him!" Adrian's voice cracks fully now, raw, aimed across the table like something physical. "Ask him why he ran. Ask him what he's been digging through since he got back. Go on, Lucian. Tell them what you're really looking for."

The room holds its breath around me. I hold mine.

Lucian doesn't move.

***

Lucian’s pov.

I don't look away from Adrian's shaking hands. That's the useful thing about being the one everyone forgets is watching — nobody expects me to notice the way his grip has gone white at the knuckles, or the way his eyes cut to me for half a second before they land back on Adrian, checking what I've heard the way a man checks a wound to see if it's bleeding through the bandage.

I could answer him. Six words and this whole dinner unravels — you crashed that car yourself.

I could hand him back the truth he's spent a decade rewriting and watch what it does to his face in front of his wife and his son.

I set my glass down instead. Slow. Unhurried.

I can't react now, he can shout all he wants, until I'm done with my investigation — I will remain quiet, that quiet, from me, is not the absence of a reaction. It's the choice of one.

"I'm not looking for anything, Adrian." My voice comes out level, almost gentle, the tone I'd use telling a family the surgery didn't go the way they'd hoped. "I came back because Harold needed a surgeon and I was the only one who could do it. That's all this is."

"That's all this is." He laughs, thin and wrong. "You expect me to believe that. After everything."

"I don't expect anything from you." I let that sit exactly as long as it needs to, not defensive, not soft. A closed door with a doctor's calm painted over it. "You're upset. It's late, and it's been a long week for all of us."

Linda's hand is on his shoulder now, murmuring something I don't bother to hear, and I watch Julian's face instead — watch the particular confusion of a son realizing, in real time, that his father might not be telling the story he's always told.

Good. Let him wonder.

Eveline is watching me the way she watches everything, quick and systematic, filing this away in whatever drawer she keeps the things she isn't ready to ask about yet. She is so predictable — at least for me.

She knows there's a version of tonight underneath this one. She doesn't know how far underneath. I intend to keep it that way for exactly as long as it takes me to finish what I actually came back to find — and it isn't revenge, and it isn't Adrian.

If I say either of those things out loud tonight, I hand him the one thing he's been fishing for since I walked through that door.

Time.

"I think," I say, standing, my chair scraping back once, controlled, "we should let dinner end before anyone says something they can't take back."

Nobody moves.

I gesture to Eveline that it's time to leave.

She stands up immediately, not asking questions, or waiting for any reaction to know what she can or not do. Love an obe

dient girl.

I know this is not the end. It's the beginning of everything getting more confusing than ever.