Three Of A Kind

Three Moves Ahead

Roan stepped back from me so quickly I felt the loss of his warmth like a physical thing, an ache I had no intention of examining any further than I had to.

"Emory." His voice had already smoothed itself back into that careful, controlled register, like a door closing somewhere behind his eyes. "It's late."

"It is." Emory didn't move from the doorway, didn't uncross his arms, just watched the two of us with the patient, unhurried attention of a man who already knew exactly how this looked and had no intention of pretending otherwise. His gaze moved from Roan to me and back again, slow, deliberate, cataloguing something neither of us had said out loud. "I came to ask Ms. Ashby something. I didn't expect an audience."

"I was just leaving," I said, and hated how unsteady it came out.

"Were you." It wasn't a question. Emory finally moved, stepping aside from the doorway with exaggerated courtesy, an invitation and a challenge at once. "Walk with me, Ms. Ashby. I'll show you back to the west wing myself. Given how easily you seem to lose your way in this house."

I didn't miss the edge under the offer. Neither, judging by the tightness that moved through his jaw, did Roan.

"Goodnight, Roan," I said, and left before either of them could say anything else, my heels sharp against the hardwood, my composure held together by nothing more than sheer stubbornness. Emory fell into step beside me a moment later, unhurried, his hands in his pockets, close enough that I was aware of every inch of space between us and every inch he chose not to close.

We walked in silence for the length of the corridor, past portraits of Castellane ancestors who all seemed to share the same unimpressed expression, past a wall of tall windows looking out over grounds swallowed entirely in dark, the house so quiet around us I could hear my own pulse. Somewhere far off, a clock struck the half hour. I told myself I wasn't waiting for him to speak first.

I was lying.

"You're good," Emory said finally, conversational, almost admiring, which was somehow more unsettling than if he'd sounded angry. "I'll give you that. Roan doesn't let people close, not since our father died, maybe not before that either. Barrett lets everyone close but rarely means it, it's just how he survives a room. And you had both of them off balance within twenty-four hours. That's not luck, Ms. Ashby. That's a skill."

"I'm not trying to unbalance anyone."

"No?" He glanced sideways at me, pale eyes moving over my face like he was reading something written there in a language only he understood. "Then it's just a coincidence. That the one person our father trusted with everything happens to be someone none of us has ever heard him mention, not once, in years of dinners and holidays and every ordinary conversation a family has. That you went white as a sheet the second Winslow told you that you'd be living under this roof with us, like it was the last thing on earth you wanted, even though you'd clearly known about this appointment for weeks. That you deflect every question about yourself with the practiced ease of someone who's had a great deal of practice."

"Careful, Mr. Castellane. That's starting to sound like an accusation."

"It's an observation." We stopped walking, halfway down a corridor lit only by the moon through the tall windows, and he turned to face me fully, close enough now that I had to tilt my head back to hold his gaze, the same charged proximity I'd felt with Roan except entirely different in texture. Colder. More deliberate. Like standing too near a fire that had decided, very precisely, exactly how much heat to let off and not a degree more. "I don't trust things I can't explain, Ms. Ashby. I never have. It's the only reason this company still exists in the state it's in. And right now, you're the most unexplainable thing in this house."

"Maybe I'm just a good lawyer."

"Maybe." His voice dropped, low enough that it did something entirely unwelcome to my pulse, low enough that I felt it more than heard it. "Or maybe you're the most interesting problem I've had in years, and I haven't decided yet whether I want to solve you or simply enjoy watching you try to stay ahead of me for as long as you can manage it."

The air between us felt too thin, too charged, my whole body suddenly, infuriatingly aware of how close he was standing, the clean, cold scent of him, something like cedar and rain, the way his eyes had dropped, just once, to my mouth before returning to my eyes like he hadn't quite meant to let me see it happen.

"I don't know what you think you know," I said, quieter than I meant to, my voice betraying more than I wanted it to.

"I don't know anything yet." A ghost of a smile, there and gone so fast I almost doubted I'd seen it. "That's what makes this interesting. Not knowing. I intend to find out, one way or another, and I find I'm rarely patient once I've decided something's worth the effort."

He reached out, slow enough that I could have stepped back, slow enough that not stepping back felt like its own kind of answer, and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. The barest brush of his fingers against my skin, gone before I could fully process it had happened at all, and still enough to leave a trace of heat behind long after his hand had dropped.

My breath caught, audibly, humiliatingly. I saw him notice. Of course he noticed. He noticed everything.

"Sleep well, Ms. Ashby," he said, low, satisfied in a way that made my whole body feel lit from the inside out, and turned to walk away before I could find a single word to answer him with, his footsteps unhurried down the corridor like he had all the time in the world and knew it.

I stood there a long moment after he'd disappeared around the corner, heart hammering, furious at my own body for reacting so completely to a man who had just, very calmly, told me he intended to unravel every secret I had. I pressed the back of my hand to my cheek, half expecting to find it as warm as it felt.

I made it three steps toward my room before my phone buzzed in my pocket.

I almost didn't check it. It was late, and I told myself it was nothing, a delayed email, an automated reminder, anything ordinary enough to explain away the unease already curling low in my stomach.

It wasn't ordinary.

Unknown number. No name attached. Just seven words waiting on the screen, and then, a beat later, more.

I know you're there. I know what he told you to keep from them. You have until the end of the trial to decide whose side you're really on.

I read it twice, then a third time, before the cold fully sank into my chest, before my hands had stopped shaking long enough to grip the phone properly. The corridor around me felt suddenly too large, too dark, every shadow between the windows suddenly deliberate.

Whoever had sent it knew things no one outside that room in the east wing should have known. Details buried in a will that hadn't even been formally filed yet. A name I'd spent half my life trying to bury deep enough that it would never resurface in a house like this one.

Which meant someone else already knew exactly who I really was.

And they were giving me a deadline to decide what I was going to do about it.