THE KING'S PROPERTY

Chapter 4: The Copy

Delphine's eyes swept the room like she was cataloguing evidence for a report she'd already written in her head. The open laptop. The drive is still warm in Abigail's hand. The half step of distance between her and Xavier, that wasn't nearly enough distance at all.

"I was told you were finishing a photo survey," Delphine said, voice clipped. "Not conducting business in Mr. Drago's private study."

"I was showing him the shots so far," Abigail said, keeping her voice even. "Standard practice. Clients like to know what they're paying for before the final delivery."

"I'm not the client."

"No," Xavier said, stepping forward, all the softness that had crept into him over the last hour gone, replaced by something colder and more controlled. "You're my mother's assistant, standing in my study without an invitation. Would you like to explain that, or should I."

Delphine's jaw tightened, but she recovered fast, the way people did when they'd spent years being paid to recover fast. "Vivienne asked me to collect the memory card personally. Given the sensitivity of the documentation."

"Given the sensitivity," Xavier repeated, letting the words sit in the air like something rotting. "You mean given that it's evidence for a court filing you don't want me to see before you use it."

"That's not"

"Save it." He held out his hand toward Abigail without looking away from Delphine, and Abigail understood immediately, passing him the drive with the copied files instead of the original card still sitting in her camera bag across the room. Xavier held it up between two fingers like it weighed nothing. "Here. Everything Miss Lee shot today. Cracks, water stains, every flaw you were hoping to parade in front of a judge."

Delphine's eyes narrowed, some instinct in her clearly sensing a trap she couldn't quite name. "That's the original card?"

"It's everything you're owed," Xavier said, which wasn't quite a lie and wasn't quite the truth either, and Abigail found herself impressed by how easily the half answer slid out of him. "Miss Lee was hired to document the property. She's done that. What you do with it isn't her concern anymore."

Delphine took the drive, turning it over once like she could interrogate it by touch alone. "And the two of you, working late over an open laptop. Is that also not my concern?"

"No," Xavier said. "It isn't."

The finality in his voice left no room for follow-up, and Delphine, whatever else she was, knew when a door had closed. She gave Abigail one last look, sharp and assessing, the kind that catalogued a person as either useful or dangerous and hadn't yet decided which.

"Vivienne will want to speak with you directly," she said to Abigail. "About your involvement here."

"I did a job," Abigail said. "That's the extent of my involvement."

"We'll see." Delphine turned and left, heels clicking against the hardwood in a rhythm that felt deliberately unhurried, like she wanted them to know she wasn't rattled even if she was.

The moment the door clicked shut, Xavier exhaled, long and slow, the kind of breath that had been held for longer than the last ten minutes.

"That won't hold her off for long," he said. "She'll realize the discrepancy the second her tech team compares timestamps on the files."

"Then we bought what, an hour? Two?"

"Enough for my lawyer to file a preliminary motion tomorrow morning using the images with full context attached. Repair invoices, contractor timelines, everything Vivienne wanted to leave out." He set the laptop down and looked at her, and something in his expression had shifted again, warmer than the ice he'd shown Delphine, but heavier too, like the adrenaline was draining out and leaving something more honest in its place. "You didn't have to help me lie to her."

"I didn't lie. You did the technically-true thing. I just handed over a drive."

"Semantics."

"Useful semantics." She managed a small smile, and it surprised her how easily it came after the tension of the last few minutes. "I told you. I don't like being someone's weapon. If I'm going to be caught in the middle of this, I'd rather it be on the side that says please instead of the side that sends three-word texts demanding memory cards."

Something shifted across his face at that, quiet and unguarded, and for a moment he looked less like the man who'd stared down his mother's assistant and more like someone she'd only started to see in glimpses. Tired. Grateful. A little disbelieving that anyone had chosen his side without being paid or obligated to.

"You should go," he said, though his voice didn't carry any real urgency behind it. "Before Vivienne decides to come find you herself instead of sending Delphine to do it."

"Probably," Abigail agreed, not moving.

"I mean it. She's not going to be kind about this."

"I believe you." Still, she stayed where she was, camera bag over one shoulder, drive of copied evidence now in his hands instead of hers, and something about leaving felt like walking away from the middle of a sentence neither of them had finished.

Xavier crossed the room, slower this time, no urgency in it, and stopped close enough that she had to tilt her head back again the way she had that morning in the garden, except now there was no anger in the distance between them, only something quieter and far more dangerous.

"Thank you," he said. "For today."

"You already said that."

"I'm saying it again because I mean it more the second time." His eyes moved over her face like he was memorizing something he wasn't sure he'd get to see again. "Most people who walk into my life these days want something from me. You didn't ask for anything beyond an hour."

"Maybe I just haven't figured out what I want yet," she said, and the honesty of it surprised her as much as it seemed to surprise him.

For a moment neither of them spoke, the study quiet except for the hum of the air conditioning and the distant sound of a car pulling away from the front of the house, Delphine's, probably, heading back to deliver a drive full of half truths to a woman who wouldn't stay fooled for long.

"I should walk you out," Xavier said finally, stepping back, putting air between them that felt less like relief and more like restraint. "Before I do something that complicates an already complicated day."

Abigail's pulse picked up at that, at the weight in the word complicates, at the way he said it like a warning to himself as much as to her.

"Complicates it how," she asked, unable to help herself.

Xavier looked at her for a long moment, jaw working like he was deciding how much honesty the moment could hold.

"I don't know you," he said quietly. "I met you six hours ago in my garden. You could be anyone. You could be one more piece Vivienne put on the board without me realizing it yet."

"But?"

"But I don't think you are." His voice dropped lower, rougher at the edges. "And that terrifies me more than anything my mother has done in the last eight months."