Chapter 4: The Check
1570 Words
Mira’s POV
“Taste it,” Dorian said. “Don’t thank me. Just taste it.”
It was six in the morning. I stood in the kitchen with my hair still wet, Elias’s words running through my head.
Someone has known for eighteen months.
I hadn’t slept. I couldn’t stop shaking.
Dorian placed a bowl on the counter in front of me.
Chicken soup. Little dumplings. A sprig of parsley on top.
My mother’s recipe.
“You used to bring it to me when I was sick,” he said, staring at the stove instead of me. “I was seventeen. I had the flu. You climbed through my window with a pot and a spoon, and you refused to leave until I finished it.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember everything.” He finally looked at me. “Remembering was never my problem.”
My throat tightened.
I wanted to believe him. That was the dangerous part.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, Elias’s voice kept repeating, Ask yourself why.
I ate the soup. It was perfect.
I almost hated him for that.
When I finished, he took the bowl and rinsed it himself, holding it under the running water a little longer than necessary.
“I’m not asking you for anything,” he said, staring into the sink. “I just wanted you to know I remember the good parts too.”
I didn’t know what to say.
So I picked up a dish towel and dried the bowl. We stood side by side in silence, two people who had once known everything about each other and now had no idea what to do with their hands.
The days that followed felt strange.
Dorian started coming downstairs for dinner. He never explained why. He would simply appear at the long table, sit down in front of one of the plates I’d set out, and ask what I was cooking. Then he would listen to my answer as though it actually mattered.
I learned that he read the same newspaper page twice.
He learned that I hummed while chopping onions.
“What did you do before this?” he asked one evening over roast potatoes.
“Home-health aide. Before that, I was an apprentice at the pack clinic.”
“Your mother’s clinic.”
“Everyone remembers my mother.”
“She would have been proud of you.” He kept his eyes on his plate. “I’m not saying that to be kind. It’s just true.”
I held my fork still.
It was the first thing he’d said in a week that I couldn’t find a lie in.
Still, I watched everything.
The way Jasper’s smile faded whenever his brother laughed. The way Sable never let her phone out of her sight. The way every door in the east wing remained shut.
Every night at nine, I video-called the hospital. Finn held up his drawings one after another, and I clapped for each one.
“Tell me about the big house,” he said.
I told him about the pine trees.
I didn’t tell him whose trees they were.
And every night, I lay awake doing the same calculations.
Sixty thousand dollars. Three months.
If anyone discovered the truth, the silence agreement could ruin me. One million dollars.
Finn might never get to run.
Nobody knew about the text messages. Nobody knew about Elias. And I couldn't decide whether I was protecting my son, protecting myself, or protecting the man I was beginning to forgive.
On Wednesday, I was carrying clean sheets to the guest rooms when I heard voices coming from the library.
“…been seen with Ward twice now.”
Jasper.
There was no trace of his usual playful tone.
I stopped behind the half-open door.
“Then it’s time for paperwork,” another voice replied. Soft. Patient. “A new agreement. A generous gift. People always sign.”
“Not this one.”
“Everyone has a price, Jasper.”
“She’s different.”
“Then we find the right price.”
Footsteps approached.
I pressed myself against the wall just as the door opened.
Silas looked down at me, wearing his usual warm smile.
“Ah, Miss Calloway. Just the person I wanted to see.”
He glanced at the sheets in my arms.
“Lovely sheets. I hope we’ll be seeing a great deal of each other.”
He walked away, his cane tapping against the floor.
Jasper followed without looking at me.
I stayed where I was until my heart stopped pounding.
She’s different.
Why would Jasper say that? What did he know about me that made him sound almost sorry?
And what was this new agreement?
A generous gift.
Silas was building me a cage with a golden lock, and I was standing right in the middle of it, holding a pile of clean sheets.
On Thursday evening, Dorian asked me to join him in the study.
I almost refused.
I hadn’t been inside since the night I found him sitting on the floor, surrounded by broken glass. But a fire was burning in the grate, and two cups of tea sat on a small table between two chairs.
He looked at me as though he wasn't sure I would come.
The room felt smaller in the firelight. Someone had cleaned up the glass. The photographs were gone from the floor, and I made myself not wonder where he’d put them.
“I owe you an evening that isn’t a disaster,” he said.
I laughed before I could stop myself.
“That’s a pretty low bar.”
“I’m aiming for the floor.”
We talked.
Really talked.
About the book he kept leaving on the counter. About the dog he’d had as a boy that once ate his father’s boot. About nothing important at all.
At some point, I stopped checking the door.
The fire crackled. The tea went cold.
For the length of one cup, we were just two people sitting in a warm room. I let myself forget what I owed the world and all the things I still hadn’t told him.
Then he laughed.
A real, surprised laugh.
It changed his whole face, and for a moment, I saw the boy I’d once climbed through a window for.
Then his shoulders stiffened, as though he’d remembered who he was supposed to be, and that boy disappeared.
“Mira.”
He turned his cup slowly between his hands.
“Choosing Night. I told you not to make it more than it was.”
My heart stopped.
“I remember.”
“It was more. It was always more. I said those things because—”
The door opened without a knock.
Silas stood in the doorway, dressed in his gentle gray coat, a leather folder tucked beneath his arm. Jasper lingered behind him in the hall.
“Forgive the interruption, Alpha,” Silas said. “But this cannot wait.”
He placed the folder on the table and opened it.
The first page was marked HOUSEHOLD CONFIDENTIALITY RIDER.
The penalty for speaking had increased from one million dollars to two million.
Beneath the agreement lay a check.
I looked at the amount once.
Then again.
Eighty thousand dollars.
Not seventy. Not a hundred.
Eighty thousand exactly.
The full cost of Finn’s surgery and hospital stay. The same figure the billing office had printed on my receipt that very week.
Only three people knew that number.
Dr. Shah.
Aunt Dot.
And the clerk who had stamped my receipt.
“What is this?” I asked.
My voice sounded distant, as though someone else had spoken.
“A precaution,” Silas replied. “The journalist Ward was seen speaking with you. If you sign tonight, you may leave tonight with this gift for your… family.”
I looked at Dorian.
He was staring at the folder but hadn't touched it.
“I didn’t ask for this,” he said. “Silas, take it away.”
“The Council asked for it, Alpha. Not you.”
“Take it away.”
“It’s only a kindness.” Silas turned to me with a pleasant smile. “Eighty thousand dollars would solve so many problems, wouldn’t it?”
I couldn't move.
If I took the money, I could pay for everything that night. I could drive straight to Port Marlen and have Finn ready for surgery before sunrise.
But I would never know why the check was for exactly the right amount.
“I’m not signing,” I said.
“What a pity.”
Silas gathered the papers.
As he passed my chair, he rested his cold fingers on my shoulder and leaned closer. His voice dropped until only I could hear him.
“Children are so very expensive, aren’t they, my dear? I would hate for yours to go without.”
I froze.
The fire popped behind us.
Dorian went completely still.
He’d heard it too.
I heard his chair scrape against the floor. In the hallway, Jasper seemed to stop breathing.
For a moment, the whole house fell silent.
Then Dorian slowly turned from the doorway to face me.
“Yours?” he asked.
His eyes searched mine, and I watched the confusion give way to something else.
“Mira.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “What child?”
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