Married To The Devil's Son

Chapter Nine : The Brother

(He arrived on a Wednesday.)

Sienna was in the garden when she heard the car — a different engine from the usual, faster, less careful. She looked up from the rosebush she had been quietly untangling and watched a sleek black car come around the side of the estate with the particular confidence of someone who knew exactly where they were going and had never once been told they couldn't go there.

The car stopped.

The door opened.

And the man who stepped out was —

Not what she expected.

He was tall like Damien — same dark hair, same sharp jaw — but where Damien carried himself like a closed door, this man carried himself like an open window. Easy. Warm. Like someone who had decided a long time ago that life was better enjoyed than endured.

He saw her immediately.

And he smiled.

Not the polite restrained smiles she had gotten used to in this house. A real one. Wide, genuine and completely unguarded.

"You must be Sienna," he said, walking toward her with his hands in his pockets like they were old friends who had simply not met yet. "I'm Kai. The better looking brother."

Sienna blinked.

Then — before she could stop it — she laughed.

An actual laugh. The first real one since she had arrived at this house. It came out before she could decide whether to let it and it felt so good and so strange and so completely unexpected that she pressed her lips together immediately after, like she had accidentally revealed something.

Kai Voss grinned like he had won something.

"There it is," he said. "My brother told me you were serious. I had a feeling he was wrong."

"Your brother doesn't know me that well yet," Sienna said.

"No," Kai agreed pleasantly. "But he will."

Dinner that evening was different.

Not quieter — louder. Not more tense — easier. Kai talked the way some people breathe — naturally, continuously, without apparent effort — moving from one topic to the next with a warmth that filled the dining room in a way Sienna hadn't realized it needed filling until now.

He asked her questions. Real ones. About her degree, her favorite books, what she thought of the city, whether she had found the hidden coffee machine on the second floor that Margaret pretended didn't exist.

Sienna found herself talking.

Actually talking. Not carefully, not strategically, just — talking. The way she used to talk to Nora on Sunday mornings over bad coffee and good conversation.

It felt like breathing after holding her breath for days.

She was smiling at something Kai said about Margaret and the coffee machine when she felt it — that particular shift in the air she had learned to recognize.

She looked up.

Damien was watching her from his end of the table.

He wasn't eating. He wasn't talking. He was simply sitting with his wine glass held loosely in one hand and his grey eyes fixed on her face with an expression she had never seen on him before.

She couldn't name it exactly.

But it made her chest do something complicated.

She held his gaze for one second.

He looked away first.

After dinner Kai found her in the hallway.

"Walk with me," he said easily. "I want to show you something."

They walked to the east wing — a part of the house she hadn't explored yet — and Kai pointed out a small sitting room with enormous windows that looked out over the entire front of the estate.

"Best view in the house," he said. "Nobody uses it. Classic Voss family logic — own beautiful things and never enjoy them."

Sienna laughed softly.

"How long are you staying?" she asked.

"A few days," he said. He leaned against the window frame and looked at her with an expression that was friendly and open and easy. "How are you really doing? And I mean really. Not the answer you give people who aren't asking properly."

Sienna looked at him.

Something about the question felt genuine.

Something about it also felt — just slightly — too well placed. Too perfectly timed. Like a door opened too smoothly to have been opened by accident.

She smiled anyway.

"I'm adjusting," she said carefully.

"Is he good to you?" Kai asked. "Damien. Is he treating you well?"

"He is," she said simply.

Kai nodded slowly. Looked out the window.

"Good," he said quietly. "That's good."

He asked one more question before they said goodnight.

Casual. Offhand. Almost an afterthought.

"Do you trust him yet?"

Sienna looked at him.

Something moved in her chest — small, instinctive, like a door she hadn't known was open quietly pulling itself shut.

"I'm getting there," she said.

Kai smiled warmly.

"Good," he said again.

He said goodnight and walked away down the corridor and Sienna stood alone at the window looking out at the dark estate and something about that last question stayed with her longer than it should have.

Do you trust him yet?

It was such a specific thing to ask.

Such a specific word.

Yet.