Forgotten Blood

No Reaction At All

Ava didn't look up from her book until Zara sat down across from her hard enough to rattle the teacups.

"You felt it too," Zara said. Not a question.

"Felt what."

"Don't do that. The reading thing. I know you weren't actually reading at the gala, you were watching Adrian make a fool of himself over the foundation girl."

Ava finally closed the book, setting it face down like she didn't trust the conversation enough to mark her page. "Lena."

"Lena," Zara repeated, testing the name like it tasted wrong. "Something about her face."

"I thought it was just me."

"It wasn't just you." Zara reached for the teapot and didn't pour anything, just held it, restless in a way she rarely let anyone see. "I can't place it. It's like déjà vu with a stranger. Doesn't make sense."

"Maybe she reminds you of someone from a magazine."

"Maybe." Zara didn't sound like she believed it. "Or maybe I'm bored enough to invent a mystery so this marriage feels less like a life sentence."

Ava almost smiled at that. Almost.

Neither sister said the obvious thing out loud — that they weren't jealous their husbands had spent an entire gala orbiting a stranger. They'd stopped being jealous of attention from Adrian and Damien a long time before either brother noticed they'd stopped trying.

"Do you care?" Ava asked finally. "If something happens. With her and Adrian."

Zara considered the question with more honesty than either of them expected. "No. I care that nobody in this house tells me the truth about anything. That's different from caring who he sleeps with."

She finally poured the tea. It had gone cold ten minutes ago and neither of them mentioned it.

Marcus's voice came through colder than usual that morning, no warmth left over from the success at the gala.

"You let him keep your number too easily."

"He asked. Refusing would've looked strange." Lena pulled her coat tighter against the wind, walking the long way to the meeting point because Marcus liked making her walk, liked the small daily proof that she'd come when called. "I know how to do my job."

"Your job is to take the family apart. Not enjoy the view while you do it."

"I'm not enjoying anything."

"You smiled at him longer than the script needed." Marcus's eyes cut sideways at her, sharp, assessing. "I watched the footage."

Something in her chest went very still. "You're watching footage of me now?"

"I'm watching an investment. Don't confuse the two." He pulled an envelope from his jacket, didn't hand it over yet, made her wait the way he always made her wait. "Eleanor Sterling controls every account that matters in that family. You're not there for Adrian's heart. You're there for what his grandmother protects."

"You've mentioned her three times now. The grandmother." Lena kept her voice flat, curious instead of suspicious, because suspicious got punished. "Why does she matter more than the brothers?"

"Because she's the one who actually built that fortune, and the one who'll burn the whole house down before she lets a stranger near it." Something passed behind Marcus's eyes, brief, almost like memory. "Trust me. I know exactly what she's capable of protecting."

"You sound like you know her personally."

"I know people like her." He finally handed over the envelope, closing the subject like a door slammed in her face. "New schedule. Adrian's at the downtown gallery Thursday. Be there. Accidentally."

She took the envelope without arguing, because arguing was a luxury Marcus had never once let her afford.

The gallery was nearly empty on a Thursday afternoon, which made the accident easier to stage and harder to enjoy.

Adrian was standing in front of a sculpture that looked like it cost more than most people's houses, hands in his pockets, expression unreadable in the way she was starting to recognize as his default setting.

"You again," he said, without turning around. He'd noticed her before she'd said a word, which annoyed her more than it should have.

"This is a public gallery."

"It's also the gallery I personally funded, which makes running into you here twice in one week feel less like coincidence and more like a hobby."

Lena let herself smile, because pretending she hadn't been caught would've insulted both of them. "Maybe I just have good taste."

"Maybe." He turned to face her properly. "Or maybe you're the first interesting thing that's happened to me in longer than I'd like to admit, and I'm choosing not to question it too hard."

The honesty in that landed somewhere it shouldn't have. Marks weren't supposed to say things like that. Marks were supposed to perform confidence, not hand it over so easily.

"That's a strange thing to tell a stranger," she said.

"You don't feel like a stranger." He studied her face longer than comfort allowed, the way he had at the painting, the way that made her feel catalogued rather than admired. "What are you running from?"

The question landed like a hand closing around her throat, gentle, but not gentle enough to ignore.

"Nothing," she said, too fast.

"Everyone who says nothing that fast is running from something." He didn't push further, which somehow made it worse. "I won't ask again. I just wanted you to know I noticed."

Nobody noticed her. That was the entire architecture of her life — invisible enough to lie to, forgettable enough to disappear from. She didn't have a script for a man who looked at her like there was something underneath worth finding.

"You should go back to your sculpture," she said, quieter than she meant to. "It's the safer option."

"Probably." Adrian didn't move. "I've never been especially good at picking the safe option."

In her ear, silence. Marcus hadn't said a word through the entire exchange, which was somehow louder than any instruction he could have given.

Lena left first, because leaving first was the only kind of control she had left in that room.

She didn't look back. She just couldn't convince herself that she was leaving something special behind.

That action made it hard for her to recognize herself anymore.