Page 9

I step out into the garden barefoot, wet grass clinging to my ankles like mossy chains.

The storm is over, but the world still feels soaked in static.

Like the air’s holding its breath, waiting for something worse to happen.

The sun’s just breaking the horizon, cutting pale gold across the lawn and the mist hanging low like a breath held too long.

Everything smells like wet earth, fresh flowers, and mist.

The security cameras blink somewhere behind me—silent, blinking judgment—but I’ve memorized the blind spots. I move like a shadow, slipping through a cracked panel in the old greenhouse that’s been begging for repair for years.

It’s overgrown now, with vines curling like fingers around rusted beams and glass panels dusted with moss. Once, it bloomed. But now, it’s just ruin dressed in sunlight. But I don’t stop there.

I slip through the hedgerow path behind the garden’s edge, the one no one uses anymore. The path leads to the old treehouse. My secret place. The only place where I can go and be myself. It’s my kingdom made of splinters and chipped paint.

It stands like a forgotten shrine among the branches, cloaked in ivy and the kind of peace that feels alive. God, how long has it been since I last came here?

I climb up slowly, my feet freezing and numb, and when I open the creaky hatch, the scent hits me first. Cedar. Dust. And her perfume.

It’s faint, but it’s still there. Like she just left. Like she’ll walk in any minute and tell me I’m too stubborn for my own good.

I sit cross-legged on the warped floor, the wood creaking under my weight. I press my palm to the floorboard under the window and pry it loose. There, buried like treasure, is the old journal I hid after she died.

Her handwriting curls across the page, inked in blue, elegant but strong.

I run my fingers across the words, and then I read aloud, my voice barely above a whisper, “They’ll either worship you or break you, darling. There’s no in-between.”

My throat tightens, and my vision blurs. But I don’t sob. There are no gasps or theatrics, just heat sliding down my cheeks, betrayal-shaped and burning.

I clutch the journal so tightly that it wrinkles under my fingers.

“Why didn’t you just leave him?” I whisper, my voice breaking.

There’s no answer. Just the wind, curling through the open window like breath from another world.

She used to sit right there with me. I must’ve been eight, maybe nine.

After dinner, we’d sneak away to the treehouse while the help cleared the dishes and my father pretended to read the paper in the study.

She always brought a brush and a thermos of chamomile tea, and while the crickets sang and the stars blinked awake, she’d brush out my hair in long, slow strokes.

She told me stories of Paris in spring, of narrow streets that smelled like pastry and rain, of a time when she thought she’d be a painter in Marseille or maybe a poet somewhere near the ocean. Her voice would go soft when she talked about the life she almost had.

But fairy tales have expiration dates, and hers ended the day she married Evander Vane.

They called it a love match, with press releases and champagne receptions.

Rothschild meets Vane, legacy secured. But even as a kid, I knew it wasn’t love.

It was politics. A merger in a designer dress.

My father was around only when the press needed pictures.

The rest of the time? He chased deals like other men chased adrenaline.

When my mother got sick, his absences stretched longer. Weeks at a time. Always meetings. Always “urgent business.” She’d ask about him with that tiny trace of hope still clinging to her voice.

And I’d lie.

“He’s coming home soon,” I’d whisper.

Because even at eleven, I knew the truth would only kill her faster.

The illness came like a thief, quiet at first. Then cruel.

It hollowed her out, little by little. The medicine didn’t help.

The house filled with the soft rustling of leaves and peace.

I remember the way her hands shook when she held the tea I brought each morning.

I remember the day she couldn’t finish a sentence without wincing.

I remember how she stopped looking in the mirror.

A week before she went to Paris, where she died, I sat beside her on the bed. She was thin. Bones and memories. She brushed her thumb along my cheek and said, “Don’t let them harden you.”

I wanted to promise her that I wouldn’t. But I already had.

She was the only softness I had left.

Now, all that remains is the scent of her perfume in cedarwood and a journal full of questions no one will ever answer.

I press the journal to my chest. The tears dry on my cheeks, salty reminders of the girl I used to be.

The wind whispers through the trees, but it brings no answers.

The journal rests against my chest, heavy like a second heartbeat.

I wipe my sleeve across my face, sniffling like some goddamn child.

Get it together, Vane. You’re not eleven anymore.

You’re a woman with a stalker, a handler, and a personal security system worth more than some countries’ defense budgets.

Still. The quiet wraps around me like a too-warm blanket. Safe but smothering.

And then I hear it.

A sound, soft but intentional. Like someone pressing themselves into the earth just loud enough to be heard.

I go stiff. I know that step. I’d know that controlled, predatory rhythm anywhere now.

He’s here. I lean out the side window and peer down through the leaves.

Silas Creed.

The bastard stands at the base of the tree like a ghost summoned by regret.

One hand rests on the ladder, his other casually tucked into the pocket of those black tactical pants he always wears.

His face is almost a blur, lit by morning gold, half in shadow.

His eyes are the same steel-blue. They’re distant and quiet, like storm water pooling in a sinkhole.

My heart does something traitorous. I’m not scared. I’m just aware of his daunting size and appearance. His… everything.

“Jesus,” I mutter, wiping the last tear from under my eye with the heel of my palm. “Do you even sleep?”

No answer. Of course not.

He just stares up at me like he’s carved from the same stone as the estate’s statues. Still. Grounded. Watching. Like he belongs to the mist curling through the trees.

I lean against the window frame, letting my shirt slip a little, because fuck it. I’m tired, and I’m petty.

“You don’t speak unless you’re giving orders, is that it?” I ask, my voice sharp and sarcastic. “Must be exhausting. All that alpha energy with nowhere to go.”

Still nothing.

I shift. My shirt rides up, exposing my stomach to the cold. But I don’t bother covering it up. This man doesn’t seem to care . His eyes don’t even move.

“You’re not my superior, Creed. You don’t intimidate me.”

That one lands. I see it, barely, a movement in his neck. A twitch. It’s subtle, but it’s there.

“God, you’re like a robot,” I snap. “Do you even bleed?”

And then, finally, he speaks.

“Yes,” he answers.

That’s it. One syllable. But it hits like a hammer because it’s the first one he’s given me without a command stitched into it. No lecture. No threat. Just truth, dropped like a coin at my feet.

I blink. The sarcasm dries on my tongue.

“Well,” I mutter, clearing my throat. “I’m not throwing a rope down, but the ladder’s there.”

His fingers curl around the rungs. He climbs the same way he does everything—purposeful, silent, and controlled.

It’s like watching a shadow scale a wall.

His body moves with terrifying grace, each step revealing the way his muscles coil beneath that black T-shirt, stretching across his back, his arms, his… Jesus.

I need to get laid.

I slide over slightly, pressing my back to the wall. What is he even doing here? He doesn’t sit close. Just enough to be present and enough to shatter the peace I’d carved for myself.

We don’t talk.

The wind rustles through the leaves. The tree creaks, like it remembers us both. The journal lies between us, a paper corpse that neither of us wants to claim.

I wrap my arms around my knees, my eyes focused on a nail rusted deep into the floorboard.

“I used to pretend this place was a spaceship,” I say, my voice barely above the breeze. “Like I could launch off into some other world and escape all the screaming and glass and fake smiles.”

He doesn’t answer. He just sits and listens. And somehow, that’s worse.

“Do you ever regret your choices?” I ask suddenly, turning to him, my heart racing like I’m twelve again and trying to get a reaction out of a boy who won’t look up from his goddamn notebook.

He doesn’t speak for a full five seconds. He just stares straight ahead. And then, he finally replies, “Only the ones I didn’t make fast enough.”

I stare at him. His profile is sharp, too defined for comfort, like God took a chisel to his jawline and said, “Make them suffer.” His arms rest across his thighs, and his hands—those veined, calloused things—flex like he’s remembering something painful.

Then he turns to look at me. There’s no camera lens between us. No grainy surveillance feed buffering the intensity. Just him, flesh and breath and shadow, in this space that suddenly feels too small and too thin to contain whatever this is.

The fog has lifted, but somehow, he’s still a phantom. A presence I can’t name, can’t touch, but feel with every nerve lit and trembling.

His eyes meet mine, direct, quiet, and devastating.

“You’re not what I expected,” he says in a low voice. “But somehow, you’re exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

And just like that, something inside me stills.

For the first time in days, maybe years, I don’t feel like I’m performing. I don’t feel like I’m just a role I’ve rehearsed to exhaustion.

I feel seen. And it terrifies me.