I pulled aside the heavy curtains and looked out, trying to see the estate from Dani’s eyes. My view was almost the same as hers from three doors down. I was farther away from the conservatory, but the room still looked out at the pool and the myrtle trees whose scent was in full bloom in the early fall air.
I was hiding. It was ludicrous.
I wasn’t afraid of Carson. I’d never been afraid of him. For most of my life, he’d been the largest person in my entire world. I’d strived for his respect and his approval more than either of my parents. I’d adored him. Until that adoration had slowly been rotted away by disillusionment and hurt to reveal him as the uncompromising and cold man he truly was.
The man who’d failed in the moonlight even more than I had.
These days, I avoided him and this place simply because I didn’t want to deal with the expectations he wouldn’t set aside. I refused to have another argument about responsibility and privilege when we clearly saw those concepts through different lenses. Plus, I wasn’t ready for him to see the world I’d built beginning to crumble at the edges. Not while I was desperately trying to keep it from cracking apart completely.
He would see those shattered pieces and carelessly toss them to the wind as he’d once tossed a dog and a boy who hadn’t been able to stop crying. He would see the breakage as proof that it was time to come back. Proof he’d been right all along when I wanted to still believe he wasn’t.
That I would never need him or this place as I once had.
I didn’t give myself any more time to think. I left the room, striding toward the room I knew he’d be in just like I knew what his response would be to me being here. We’d danced together too many times for me not to know. I’d battled him on the chess field and the hunting field from the first time I could hold a gun or an ivory pawn. I could plainly see the six steps he was already taking.
As predicted, he was in the library with an unlit cigar in his mouth. He’d never light it indoors these days without facing Maribelle’s wrath. The only thing different than the image I’d had in my head was his placement at a chair in front of the fireless fireplace instead of the monstrous desk that had always been his. Beside him was the ancient chess set we’d used for so many years—my chair at the table empty. He was staring at the board and the ivory pieces whose edges were smoothed from centuries of use.
Carson’s eyebrows seemed thicker than when I’d seen him last, and they were sprinkled with white as if he’d just come out of the snow. His dark hair, which had always been so like my own, had a similar scattering of white along the temples. I’d been gone three years, but it looked like he’d aged ten times that. His eyes, a dark ember, almost black from this distance, took me in as I joined him.
He didn’t get up to hug me or shake my hand. He didn’t greet me with a warm hello. In fact, neither of us could greet each other in the way my teammates and I did. The hugs I gave my brothers in arms were an acknowledgment that we may never be able to do so again, whereas I’d always been certain Carson would be there. And suddenly, it hit me that he would not.
“You’re home early,” I said instead of hello.
He examined me, taking in all of my changes just as I’d noticed his.
“I’ve been turning more and more of the business over to Henry,” he responded to my unasked question.
Henry was only a few years younger than Carson himself, but he’d been the chief operating officer for Wellsley Place, Inc. since my childhood. While it was not a surprise to see Carson passing the mantle to him, it was still change in a place that seemed to defy it.
“Maribelle says you brought a woman here,” he continued. “Someone you’re protecting. Should I worry about troops storming the doors?”
“No.”
“What kind of trouble is she in?”
“Not trouble, per se. She’s being targeted by a stalker. The person behind it doesn’t know me. Doesn’t know you. There’s nothing to tie her to here.”
He gave me a nod so like my own curt ones that it hit me in my core. I’d turned out to be like him, even when I’d strived to do just the opposite.
My phone rang, and I glanced down to see Mac’s smiling face. I’d known I’d be the second call he made. I turned toward the door. “Excuse me.”
I left him there, waiting to play chess. A game I’d refused to play with him since he’d sent me away. It had been a childish sort of revenge that had become an obstinate man’s habit.
“She’s safe,” I said instead of hello as I hit the button and headed outside.
“Damnit, Nash. She was poisoned!” Mac said harshly.
“She was, but she’s okay. I suggested she give up the job―”
“Oh great, that would just make her dig her heels in harder. Do you even know my sister at all?”
No, I wanted to answer, and yet, I did. I’d known she wasn’t going to just walk away from the job she’d barely been hired to do. She wasn’t one to cower in fear. She faced her fears. Her shaking hand in mine in the elevator the night before was a good example. The fact that she insisted on using it at a time when she was already worn out and raw took courage.
“Dani gave me some line about splitting everyone up,” Mac said. “What the hell is your logic for keeping her down there?”
I repeated the logic I’d just given my uncle. Fiona didn’t know me or this place. Brady was in more
