Buried Vows

Chapter Seven: The Man My Father Promised Me To

Wren's Pov

I recognized him before he said a word.

Not his face, five years had changed that, sharpened it, aged it in the particular way privilege ages a man, slowly and expensively. I recognized the way he stood in the doorway, like the room already belonged to him and the rest of us were simply late arriving to it. Julian Voss had learned that posture the same year I learned mine. We'd been taught by the same people.

"Aveline." He said it like a gift he was handing me, like I should be grateful for the sound of my own name in his mouth. "God. It's really you."

"It's Wren." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "And you need to leave."

"Five years." He stepped past Farrow like the man wasn't standing there at all, into the penthouse, two men I didn't recognize hovering behind him in the hallway. "Five years, and you're going to open with leave."

"I'm going to open with whatever gets you out of this apartment fastest."

Something flickered across his face hurt, or a very good performance of it. "I looked for you. Do you understand that? I hired people. I spent money my own father didn't know I had. I never once believed you drowned, because I know you, Aveline, I've known you since we were children, and you have never once in your life been the kind of girl who slips off a dock in a storm."

"Then you know more about that night than most people ever have." I didn't move from where I stood. "What do you want, Julian?"

"I want what was promised to me." He said it simply, like a man stating a fact rather than a threat, which somehow made it worse. "The contract didn't die with your disappearance. I've spent five years honoring an agreement to a woman who wasn't even alive to know I was still honoring it. I think that's earned me a conversation, at minimum."

"You're not entitled to a conversation. You're not entitled to anything. I was six years old when that contract was signed. I didn't agree to it then and I'm not agreeing to it now."

"And him?" Julian's eyes cut to Damian, standing a few feet behind me, silent in the particular way that meant he was letting me handle this for exactly as long as I wanted to and not one second longer. "You'll marry a stranger you've known a matter of days, but not the man your family chose for you your whole life?"

"I'll do what keeps me alive," I said. "Right now, that isn't you."

Something shifted in Julian's face then, not anger, not yet, but a kind of cold recalculation that reminded me, uncomfortably, of Damian doing the same thing three nights ago in his office. "You think Kade is keeping you safe. You think this " a gesture at the room, at Damian, at all of it "is protection. Ask him what he actually wants from you, Aveline. Ask him what he's really planning to do with you once Silas is dealt with."

"That's enough," Damian said, quiet, final, the first thing he'd said since Julian walked in, and something in the two words made even Julian's men shift their weight.

"Is it?" Julian didn't back down, though I noticed he didn't step closer either. "You know what I find interesting, Kade? Five years, and nobody in your family's orbit ever managed to find her. And yet somehow, the moment she surfaces on your payroll, you're the first to know exactly who she is. That's either remarkable luck, or you've been looking a great deal longer than you're telling her."

I felt something go cold in my chest. I looked at Damian, and for exactly one second, one second, gone almost before I could be certain I'd seen it at all, something crossed his face that wasn't denial.

"Get out of my home," Damian said, and this time his voice had dropped into something I hadn't heard from him before, low and absolutely without room for argument. "You have thirty seconds before I stop being polite about it."

Julian held his gaze a moment longer, then smiled, small and unhurried, and inclined his head toward me instead. "I'll be in the city through the weekend. I imagine we'll speak again before your little engagement announcement, Aveline. Families like ours always find a reason to."

He left the way he'd arrived unhurried, certain of his own welcome and the door clicked shut behind his men with a quiet that felt louder than anything that had been said in the room.

I turned to Damian the second the lock caught. "What did he mean? About you looking for me longer than you're telling me?"

"Julian Voss says things to unsettle people. It's the only leverage he actually has."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting tonight." His voice had gone carefully even again, the mask sliding back into place a half-second too late for me not to have noticed it slip. "You have enough to carry right now, Wren. Trust me on the timing, if nothing else."

I wanted to push. I wanted to keep pushing until whatever he was holding behind that carefully controlled face came loose entirely. I didn't get the chance, because my phone buzzed in my pocket, the same unsaved number as before, the one that had already told me things no stranger should know about the night I died and when I looked down at the screen, the message waiting there made the whole room tilt sideways beneath me.

I saw Julian Voss walk into that building tonight. Careful, Aveline. He was there the night of the storm too. Closer than you remember.