Page 12 of Her Wicked Promise (The Devil’s Plaything #2)
Robin
S even days into my arrival, I’ve finally grown accustomed to Castle Blacklake again.
I walk the halls with more confidence than when I first arrived.
The stone floors don’t seem so forbidding anymore and the huge windows don’t make me feel quite so small.
After witnessing Eva’s grief at her father’s crypt, after seeing her humanity the way I did during my previous visit, the gothic fortress feels less like a prison and more like…
well, certainly not home , but something approaching familiar.
Every day I’ve called Adrian, and every day he’s told me joyfully that Maisie is gaining strength. The change is so rapid he can hardly believe it, but when he switched to a video call so I could see for myself, I had to believe him.
It made my heart ache painfully to see them, but it was better than not seeing them.
Alicia and Dane are doing well, too, and every time I talk to them I feel the fiery certainty that I’ve done the right thing.
When I get back—when I access the five million Eva put into trust for me—or even if Eva kicks me out again and pays me some bitchy pro-rata rate like last time?—
It will still be life-changing. And I will be able to do right by my family, once and for all. Buy a house. New furniture. All the clothes they could possibly need. Send Adrian to college.
And yet I feel a chill in the air that has nothing to do with the weather. A weight I can’t shake, like the castle itself is keeping secrets.
Because yesterday I saw something I think I wasn’t supposed to see.
Leon, slipping quietly through the side gates to talk to someone waiting outside them. From my view at a second-floor window, I paused to watch him speaking with a villager—a middle-aged man in a worn wool cap who shifted nervously from foot to foot as they talked.
Doubt began to gnaw at me later that day when I took my usual walk in the castle gardens, through the long afternoon hours when Eva disappears into her study to conduct whatever dark business keeps the Novak empire running.
From what little I know of the Novaks, they don’t conduct their business out in the open like Leon was doing, where they might run the risk of being overseen or overheard. And although Leon doesn’t know I saw him, I did.
What was so vital for him to communicate that he took a risk like that?
My phone vibrates just as I’m settling back into the library with a book, although I can’t help thinking about Eva pressing me down on the settee by the window and toying with me until I told her I belonged to her.
Adrian’s name flashing up on the screen chases those thoughts away, and I answer quickly, desperate for a dose of normality.
“Hey,” Adrian says, but there’s an edge to his voice that makes my stomach drop at once. “I don’t want to worry you, but…there’s someone watching the house.”
The book slides off my lap as I sit up straighter. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Black car parked across the street for hours yesterday and again today. Tinted windows. And the same license plate. Maybe it’s nothing, but…
” He trails off, but I can hear the concern he’s trying to hide, and I don’t want to dismiss his concern, especially since I insisted he tell me about anything that caught his attention while I was away.
“Is everyone okay?” I ask, gripping the phone tight.
“We’re fine. And I’m probably just paranoid, you know? But I thought you should know.”
After I hang up, I sit in the library’s silence, wondering if I should be afraid. Someone is watching my family. The question is whether they’re there to protect or to threaten.
I know exactly who to ask.
I find Eva in her study, lounging in a leather armchair in front of the fireplace and staring into the flames. So much for the work she always claims to be doing in here. She raises an eyebrow as I burst through the door without knocking, but her expression remains maddeningly calm.
“There’s someone watching my family,” I say without preamble.
Eva nods slowly, utterly unbothered. “Yes. That would be the protection I arranged for them while you’re here.”
“Are you sure? It’s not—someone else?”
“Why would anyone else be watching your siblings?” Eva’s tone is perfectly reasonable, as though I’m being hysterical. I’m not. I’m just worried. “They’re being kept safe,” she sighs, when she sees the expression on my face. “I told you I would protect them, and I am.”
“But what if it’s not your people?” My voice rises despite my efforts to stay calm. “Adrian hasn’t noticed anyone before, so?—”
“Perhaps he’s had other things on his mind,” Eva interrupts, her amber eyes finally getting that dangerous glint they get when I’m being “disobedient.” Her voice drops to that silky tone that always makes my skin prickle.
“Do you want me to remove them? I can make a call right now. Have them pulled off.”
“No,” I snap. “I just want to be sure .”
Eva sighs again and goes to her desk, where she takes up her phone and taps out an instruction to someone. “Tell him to look again,” she says.
I message Adrian, who replies that the car has moved further down the street.
“As instructed,” Eva says. “Do you believe me now?”
“All I wanted was reassurance,” I tell her, my tone just as cool as hers. I turn on my heel to leave, but her voice stops me.
“Robin.”
I turn back and see she’s taken a seat at her desk again. “Come here. Sit on the floor next to my chair.”
Uneasily, and half expecting another impromptu ravishing, I do as she’s asked.
But she doesn’t undress me or order me to strip.
She doesn’t kiss me or even glance at me.
The most she does is run a hand through my hair now and then as she reads reports and sends emails.
I keep my eyes down, leaning against her leg with closed eyes as a sense of peace settles over me.
And Eva seems peaceful as well.
She keeps me there for an hour, and then dismisses me, telling me she won’t be down for dinner, so I can eat in my room if I prefer. Her focus is completely on her laptop, and she doesn’t even glance at me as I bid her goodbye.
I have no idea what it was about at all, but I eat alone in my room as she suggested, with a sense of relief.
The next day, during another visit to the village, my suspicions about Leon deepen.
I’m lingering outside the bakery, breathing in the scent of fresh bread and trying to shake off the claustrophobic feeling that seems to catch up with me these days, no matter how far I wander from the castle, when I catch sight of Leon in a side alley.
He’s talking to a different man this time—someone in a flat cap and work clothes who keeps glancing around nervously. Leon’s voice is low and intense, even if I can’t understand what he’s saying. And then he takes an intimidating step forward, and the man presses back against the wall.
My pulse quickens as Leon concludes the discussion with a few hissed words, and then he walks away down the alley, leaving the villager alone.
The man stays there staring after him for several long moments before finally turning back toward me.
I duck around the corner once more and make a show of looking at the vegetables on sale at the tiny grocery store.
The man emerges from the alley and hurries away down the main street.
What was that all about?
And more importantly…does Eva know?
That night at dinner, I can’t keep quiet any longer.
“I saw Leon talking to someone today,” I say, setting down my fork with more force than necessary. “It seemed…strange.”
Eva pauses with her wine glass halfway to her lips. “Oh?”
“In the village. He had a man practically cornered in an alley, and it looked like he was threatening him.”
“If Leon is threatening anyone, he has a reason to do so.”
“But…what if…”
“What if what?” she asks sharply. “Leon’s protected the Novaks since before I could walk. If he wanted me dead, I’d already be buried.”
The dismissive tone stings, but I press on. “That’s not what I meant?—”
“Then what did you mean, Robin?” Eva’s voice drops to that dangerous tone. “That my most trusted advisor, the man who’s saved my life more times than I can count, is somehow working against me? That he’s—what, exactly? Plotting? Scheming behind my back?”
When she puts it like that, my suspicions sound paranoid. Foolish. But I can’t shake what I saw.
“I just think?—”
Eva rises from her seat, the mask sliding back into place. “I will require your company tomorrow.”
My response is automatic. “Alright.”
After all, why should I care whether she’s really hearing me about Leon? But…what if she’s not hearing me? What if the man who’s protected her family for decades has his own agenda?
I have to worry about it, because I know Leon is head of Novak Consortium security. And that includes the security detail on my family at home.
I tell myself that’s the only reason. That I’m not worried about Eva herself. She’s cunning enough and savvy enough to look after herself. I’ve always been the naive one, after all.
No. I don’t need to worry about Eva.
So why do I?
The answer is written in the way my pulse quickens when I’m around her, in the way her rare approval makes my chest flutter, the way her touch burns right through my defenses like they’re made of paper.
I’m falling for her.
Again.
Despite everything—the circumstances that brought me here, the power imbalance between us, the constant feeling that I’m just a pawn in a game I don’t understand—I’m falling for Eva Novak.
Somewhere between the cemetery and the tavern, between her grief and her unexpected openness, Eva Novak stopped being just the woman who bought me.
She became something far more complicated. Something that makes my heart race and my judgment crumble.
Something that could destroy me completely if I’m not careful.