FATAL CONTRACT

Chapter Two: The Key

Ava twisted the lock shut behind her.

The metal clicked; the bolt sprang into its slot. Only with her back against the door did she dare open her hand — palm slick with sweat, the photograph's corners creased where she had pinched them.

She did not rush to look. First she raised her eyes and swept the room: the bedside lamp, the gap in the curtains, the vent in the corner. Her father had taught her: enter another's turf, and the first thing is to find the eyes. This mansion had no shortage of cameras, but the hidden ones were the deadly kind.

No red dots, no glinting lenses. At least in this room, she found none.

She slid down onto the carpet and flattened the photograph by the sconce light.

The front was her father. The same as the funeral portrait, only older, its edges brittle as if handled too often. Her fingertips traced that face, her throat tightening — forty days since the funeral, and she had not dared look at it straight.

On the back, a line in blue-black ink:

"Signed for silence. Don't move. Wait for me."

Ava's fingers went rigid.

She knew this handwriting. The final hook of each stroke turned up — her father's habit. As a child she had lain across his study watching him sign contracts stroke by stroke, a thousand times over.

But her father was dead. The dead do not write.

Unless this line was written in life. Unless, between her father and Lucian, there had been dealings she never knew.

She suddenly remembered: two weeks before his death, the study light had burned once at night. She had taken soup over, and beneath the door gap lay an unfamiliar kraft envelope, its wax seal dark red. She had taken it for ordinary business correspondence and asked nothing. Now it struck her — that wax seal and the one on the photo's corner were cast from the same mold.

She turned the photo over. At the paper's corner was a very faint dark-red mark, thorns coiled into a knot. Not wax — an impressed trace: the photo had been tucked against the envelope's seal and pressed into shape.

Her breath stopped.

So that tattoo was no gang mark, but something she did not yet understand. And her father had received it.

From the end of the corridor came a very soft footstep.

Wrong. When she had pressed her ear to the door to lock it, the whole corridor was dead silent. This footstep seemed to appear from nowhere — no tread on the floor, no brush against the wall, sliding over the carpet.

Click.

The door lock sprang open on its own.

Ava looked up. The door pushed open, and Lucian stood there, still in the matte-black wedding suit, collar slightly open, a glass of untouched whiskey in his hand.

How had he entered? She had clearly locked the door.

The photo was still spread across her lap. She scooped it up, rolled it thin, and tucked it back into its original place in her bodice.

"You—"

"Every door in this mansion, the keys are in my hand," he said, stepping in, pulling the door shut behind him, locking it. Slow and steady, like entering his own study.

Ava pushed off the floor and stood, retreating. Her spine hit the wall; no further.

"Looking for something," his gaze swept the corner she had just been studying.

"Looking for somewhere to breathe," she said.

Lucian advanced. He did not stop until a fist's width separated them. Ava tilted her head back to look at him; her nostrils caught a very faint scent — rust, mixed with cooled whiskey. Blood. Very faint, as if freshly touched and then washed.

Why was there blood on him.

"Was the photograph nice," he said.

Ava's breath caught in her throat. He had seen. From the moment by the window, he had known she took it.

She hid her hand behind her back, her fingertips meeting the hilt of the silver dagger in the fold of her skirt. Her father had taught her: the blade is faster than the tongue.

Lucian's gaze dropped, to the hand hiding the dagger.

"Hand it over," he said.

"My things — why should I give them to you."

"Because every brick in this mansion is mine," he reached out and clamped her wrist. Not much force, yet her whole arm went numb. His thumb pressed her thenar, gave a light flick, and the dagger slid from her palm into his hand.

Blade pointing outward, he spun it once and pushed the hilt half an inch back toward her, then drew it away.

"Well hidden," he said. "Pity your breathing grew heavy when you lifted the photo."

Ava's heartbeat hammered her ribs. So the instant he turned at the window was not his back to her — it was him letting her off.

"You knew all along."

"The first second you entered this mansion, I knew you were not here to be a wife," he raised his hand, the blade tip to her jaw. The cold silver against her artery; she swallowed, and the blade followed the rise of her throat.

"You came to investigate your father."

Ava's pupils contracted. He knew more than she had thought.

Lucian twisted his wrist.

A button popped and rolled onto the carpet. The collar of her dress loosened a thread; the collarbone showed, and cool air rushed in.

The blade withdrawn, he stepped back half a pace and slid the dagger back into his belt.

"I'm going to the study tonight," he looked at her, his gaze flat as if issuing a rule. "You'd best stay obediently in bed."

Ava clutched the loosened collar and said nothing.

He turned, pulled the door open, and paused an instant.

"That smell," he said, "you smelled it."

The door closed. The footsteps receded; this time she heard them, step by step, pressing into the carpet.

Ava waited until the footsteps were entirely gone before she climbed up from the wall. She did not go to the bed.

She found the photo and, by the sconce, read that line again — "Wait for me." Wait for whom, wait for what, her father had not finished. But one thing was clear: Lucian was going to the study tonight. And that file on her father's cause of death, if it existed, could only be in the study.

She tucked the photo against her skin and walked to the door, pressing her ear to the wood. The corridor was silent. She turned the handle — immovable. The key was in his hand.

She stepped back, and drew the steel hairpin from her hair. Her father had taught her: an old pin tumbler like this, a thin wire will spring it. She crouched, straightened the hairpin, and slipped it into the keyhole.

Three moves. The bolt sprang.

She pulled the door open without a sound. The corridor light threw her shadow long and thin on the wall, like a drawn blade.