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Now, she flinches. “I was never yours,” she insists.

“Is that a lie you tell yourself?” Smiling darkly, I stroke her hair. “You were looking over your shoulder every night. Jumping out of your skin when I’d message you. Checking the locks on your doors. Hardly able to sleep, because you knew I’d be watching. Waiting.” I pull in a deep breath, relishing the scent of her skin. Sometimes when I’m watching her, I forget this is better. The smell of her. The feel of her beneath my fingertips. “You couldn’t think about anyone else but me.”

Looking back, I can see it for the sickness it was. I was neglectful of my duties because every ounce of my energy was spent onher. It’s why I can only have her now, when watching herismy duty.

“You think because you scared me, I was yours?” She jerks away to whirl on me, eyes flashing vehemently. “Fear isn’t love, Pace.”

I blink at her. “Love?” She grunts when I pull her back, oiled palms slipping over her shoulders. “Love is fickle and weak. People fall out of love every day. But fear?” I slide my hand down her chest, palming the curve of a tit, reveling in the weight of it. “Fear becomes a part of you, like a new molecule. No one has ever fallen out of fear.”

Her swallow is loud in the silence of the room, reverberating. “Is that what you think? That fear is better than love?”

“I don’t need to really think about it,” I say, thumbing her nipple to a stiff peak. I wasn’t really expecting her to let me touch her like this—not without a fight.

But she just sits in the water, tilting her head. “But you love your brothers.”

“Plenty of fear involved in that, trust me.” Sighing, I let her go, returning my attention to her hair. “Actually, we all had our fair share of hazing back in boarding school. Usually, that meant getting jumped, but sometimes you’d get a coward who’d sabotage stuff. Food, clothes, assignments.” Meaningfully, I add, “Or your shampoo.”

There’s a stretch of silence as I work the oil into her scalp, and then a curious, “Whose hair got glued?”

“Lex,” I smirk, shaking my head at the memory. “Wick and I always told him to shave it at the beginning of every year, but he never would. Sometimes I think he keeps it long because it’s the only thing anyone let him have control over.”

As I work my fingers down, dividing the sticky clumps in her hair, I think back to the last time Father ordered him to cut it. It was our freshman year of high school. Father pulled us out of boarding school to attend a local academy, allowing us to live in the palace until graduation. This was basically the fucking worst, which is saying a lot. In boarding school, we had more freedom. Living locally meant more rules—one of which was a strict dress code. So Father told Lex to cut it, but then Wicker stepped up to say he’d shave his own head if Lex did.

God for-fucking-bid Wicker Ashby do anything to diminish his attractiveness.

“Individually, we all had our specialties. Wicker had his music and good looks. I had my—”

“Stalking.”

I snort and pour more oil into the palm of my hand. “Technological acumen,” I correct. “And Lex was Father’s robotic little academic. The long hair was a rebellion—until the glue incident.”

“What happened?”

“I saved it.” I chuckle, remembering the long nights in the communal shower, stubbornly combing product after product through his hair. “Took me a week, but eventually—”

She jolts forward. “A week?!”

“Different kind of glue. Chill.” I ease her back to rest against the tub. “Lex’s hair isn’t like mine. It was a learning curve.” I don’t tell her about how Lex would later learn how to do my hair, too. That these twists swinging in front of my eyes are his, spun meticulously by his own exacting fingers.

There’s a stretch of pensive silence as I let the oil soak in, smoothing it out every now and then. She breaks it with a soft, defeated sigh. “When I spent those weeks in West End, it was like people expected me to be upset about Ashby being my father. Because he didn’t claim me when it mattered. Because I could’ve been living in the palace this whole time and not in my two-bedroom apartment with my mother.” My fingers snag on a stubborn clump, and she hisses, “Careful!”

“There’s no way out but through, Rosi,” I mutter, but slow my movements.

“The truth is,” she continues, shoulders relaxing, “I can’t imagine growing up here.” She shudders. “Sometimes I think he gave me a gift by not acknowledging me sooner.”

Darkly, I confirm, “Trust me, he did.”

People outside our family, including those in PNZ and wider East End, don’t understand the quiet pressure that fills the house. They can’t comprehend that the dungeon in the basement is there for us as much as our enemies, just like the whip in Father’s office. The secret passageways. The barren solarium. The cemetery.

For a house built on the idea of creation, there sure as hell is an awful lot of destruction.

From there, I work quietly, methodically, separating the strands of hair until I can get the comb fully through it. Despite her red, angry scalp, with every pass, the tension in her body seems to loosen. She releases her knees, stretching her legs out to rest her heavy head on the lip of the tub. Her tits float in the water, perfect and round, her nipples bobbing in and out of the surface.

I can’t tell if she’s relaxed or given up.

“There,” I say, looking down at her hair. “The ends are brittle as fuck, and you’ll probably need to get them looked at or something, but I’ve reached my limits on white-girl haircare.” I tap her shoulder. “Sit up so I can wash it.”

She rises, and I use the shampoo Stella dropped off, something specifically for damaged hair. Carefully, I work it in, avoiding her inflamed scalp and focusing on getting thorough coverage.