Owned By My Dangerous Stepbrother

Chapter Five

Isla

— ❀ —

Midnight. Three knocks. Slow and polite.

I was in the box room, staring at a blank canvas, Cassian Hale’s voice looping in my head. Ask your mother how Sable found Theo’s school. Theo was asleep. Mum had come home from Ravenscar with a bright, fixed smile and gone straight to bed, but I had heard her on the phone in the bathroom with the tap running.

“Isla?” Her voice, strangely small, outside my door. “Darling. Someone’s here.”

I went cold from scalp to ankles.

A man stood in our living room. Mid-forties, handsome, in a navy cashmere coat that still held the rain. He carried a closed umbrella, and he smiled at me the way you smile at a child before you take the toy away.

“Miss Marren. Marek Voss. We haven’t met, but I admired the Grey Lady.”

My mother stood by the sofa with her arms wrapped around her ribs. She wouldn’t look at me. And she hadn’t asked him who he was or what he was doing in our house by this time, which meant she already knew.

“Mum. You can go to bed.”

“Isla—”

“Mrs. Marren, please,” Voss said calmly. “This won’t take long.”

She went. I heard her lock turn.

“Mr. Sable is delighted.” Voss strolled toward the box room as though he owned the flat. “The buyer wept. A masterpiece in lies.”

“I did what I was asked to.”

“Ever obedient.” He looked toward Theo’s door. “How is your brother? I understand he plays football.”

“Don’t you dare talk about my brother.”

“Then you'll do what Sable wants.”

“I always do the f*****g work. All I want is my father’s name cleared.”

“Your father’s name is exactly where Mr. Sable left it.” A gloved finger slid along my palette and left a streak. “Two point four million. The Grey Lady paid off one point seven. Seven hundred thousand outstanding, and interest.”

“That’s not what you—”

“You know that interest compounds, Miss Marren.” He smiled. “Mr. Sable would like another. A lost interior by Maria van der Heyden. Her work is rarely seen. You have fourteen days.”

“Fourteen days? That’s a month’s work at the least—”

“He said you would say that. You are to be reminded that it isn’t a request.”

“And if I say no?”

“You won’t.” He turned. “I hear the duck at Ravenscar was excellent.”

My blood went cold. “How do you—”

“Mr. Sable likes to know where his hands eat.”

He stopped at my worktable. Beside the turpentine, in a velvet roll, lay the last thing my father ever gave me. A sable brush, its handle of worn mother-of-pearl. He had used it for forty years. “Lovely.”

“Don’t touch that.”

He lifted it into the light. “If the painting isn’t delivered in fourteen days, the debt doubles. And your brother’s name goes on a list.”

I stopped breathing. “What list?”

His eyes slid to the crack of Theo’s door, to the pale moon of the night-light behind it, and back to me.

“Mr. Sable collects many things.”

He let the brush fall. It hit the floorboards with a small, clean sound. Then he set the heel of his polished shoe on it and pressed. Mother-of-pearl cracked. Bristles splayed. The handle splintered, and something in my chest splintered with it.

“Fourteen days,” said Voss. “Goodnight.”

He let himself out. The door closed behind him quietly.

I ran to the box room window. It doesn’t open, but the glass is clear, and the street is right there. A black car was parked and Voss slid into the back. I got my phone up, zoomed, and shot the plate three times before the car pulled away.

Then I dropped to my knees and gathered the pieces. My father’s initials were still carved into the shaft. D.M. I pressed the wood to my mouth and shook without a sound.

“Isla?”

Theo stood in the doorway in his dinosaur pyjamas, hair flattened on one side. “Who was the man?”

“Someone from work.”

“He had a nice umbrella.” He rubbed one eye. “Is Mum okay? She was crying again.”

“She’s fine, Teddy bear. Go back to bed.”

He went. I waited until his door clicked, then crossed the hall and knocked on my mother’s.

“Mum. Open the door.”

“Not tonight, darling.”

“He knew your name, and you never asked who he was.”

A long silence. Then, through the wood, so quiet I almost missed it: “Please, Isla. Not now.”

I stood there with the splintered brush in my fist and my forehead against her door.

“What are you hiding, mum?”

She didn’t answer.

Back in the box room, the blank canvas waited under the lamp. “Fourteen days,” I told it. “One lie. Then I’m free.”

The canvas didn’t answer.

I opened the photo of the plate. Bex, I typed, and my thumb hung over send. If I sent it, Bex would want to get involved. If I didn’t, I was alone with it.

The phone buzzed in my hand.

Unknown number.

Don’t bother with the plate. It’s stolen. Fourteen days. I can help you. —C.

I stared at it until the words blurred. I hated that the first thing I felt wasn’t fear. It was relief.

Voss had been gone four minutes.

Cassian Hale already knew. About Voss. About the car. About me at the window with my phone.

He wasn’t just a man who could help me.

He was watching me.