The door clicked shut behind her, and Elena stood frozen in the darkness, her back pressed against the wood, her heart pounding against her ribs.
Sunlight slipped through a gap in the curtains, laying a narrow stripe of gold across the floor. She forced herself to breathe, then slowly made herself look around the room. To move.
The bed dominated the room—massive, swathed in silver-gray silk, with purple pillows stacked against the headboard like a throne. It was the kind of bed a man bought when he expected company. Elena swallowed and quickly looked away. She had no business noticing anything about the room beyond what might help her search.
To her left, a dark archway led to what she assumed was a bathroom similar to hers. Across from it, the open doorway of a walk-in closet disappeared into shadow. Along the right wall, an obsidian-black bar gleamed beneath the sunlight, bottles catching the light like jewels. Crystal glasses hung upside down above it, each one perfectly spaced.
Enough looking. She wasn't here to admire the room.
She pushed away from the door and crossed toward the bed, the thick carpet swallowing the sound of her footsteps. Her pulse hammered in her throat. She doubted she had much time. Whatever she was looking for, she needed to find it quickly.
She started with the nightstand on the left.
The drawer opened with a faint scrape. Inside were a few objects she didn't recognize, a pack of cigarettes, a silver lighter, and a pair of cufflinks. Nothing useful. She sifted through them anyway, checking beneath each item before finally closing the drawer and moving to the other side of the bed.
The right nightstand held much the same collection of seemingly meaningless things. She moved them aside one by one, searching beneath them, her frustration growing with every empty inch. Then her fingers caught against something that shouldn't have moved.
She paused.
Running her fingertips along the bottom of the drawer, she found a narrow seam hidden beneath the lining. Her pulse quickened. She pressed against it, and the panel shifted.
A false bottom.
Elena carefully lifted it, revealing a shallow compartment beneath.
Inside was a notebook.
Plain. Black cover. A pen tucked into the spine.
Her breath caught.
She lifted it out, set it on the silk coverlet, and opened it.
The first page was dense with handwriting—sharp, slanted, efficient. The letters were familiar, but the words weren't. Strings of numbers filled the margins, mixed with symbols and combinations she couldn't make sense of.
It had to be a code. Some kind of cipher.
She flipped a page. More of the same—dates, times, symbols, a diagram of what looked like a shipping route. Her fingers trembled over the paper.
This is it. This is something.
She flopped back against the pillows, holding the phone above her face as the latest image glowed in the dimming light. Page six. Another shipping route diagram, another string of numbers she couldn't make sense of.
She swiped to page seven.
Vexley.
Her thumb paused over the screen.
Vexley. The name on the manifest she'd found in his desk.
She snapped the page, then the next, and the next.
A sound cut through the silence—a door opening somewhere below. Voices. Muffled. Male.
Her stomach dropped.
She snapped two more pages, quick and careless now, her hands shaking as the voices grew louder. Then she closed the notebook and hurried to return it exactly as she'd found it. The pen went back into the spine. She adjusted the notebook until it sat at the same angle, then checked the narrow gap between it and the drawer wall.
The voices were closer now. Footsteps sounded from the back patio, approaching the building.
She pushed the notebook into place and carefully replaced the false bottom. Then she closed the drawer, the soft click of the mechanism sounding like a gunshot in the quiet.
Her phone was still in her hand, the camera open. She shoved it into her pocket and crossed the room in four strides.
She reached the door and wrapped her hand around the handle. Slowly, silently, she turned it and pulled the door open just wide enough to slip through.
She was back in the hallway. She eased the door shut behind her, catching the latch before it could click. Then she walked. Not too fast. Not enough to draw attention. Her heels barely touched the marble as she made for the stairs, every instinct urging her to run.
Her breath came too quickly, and her hands felt cold despite the warmth of the manor. She reached the staircase and started up, one hand gripping the railing as she forced herself to keep a normal pace.
She'd made it only one step up when the dining hall door swung open behind her.
Liam Thorn stepped through first, his white shirt stark against the sunlight, his sharp face unreadable. Behind him, Sebastian Hart followed, his easy smile already in place. Presley brought up the rear, silent as a shadow.
"—and I told him, if he wanted to keep the account, he'd need to stop moving product through—" Sebastian's voice cut off mid-sentence as his eyes landed on her.
His face shifted. The business mask dissolved, replaced by something warmer, brighter. Pure delight, like she was the last thing he expected and the best thing he could have found.
"Elena." He said her name as if it were a gift. "I was hoping I'd catch you before I left."
Liam's gaze slid to her, slow and assessing. He said nothing. The silence stretched, and she felt it like a hand around her throat.
“I was just—” She gestured vaguely behind her. “Getting some air. The balcony was cold.”
The lie felt thin the moment it left her mouth. She couldn't tell whether he believed her. His expression gave her nothing to work with.
Sebastian stepped forward, closing the distance between them, his hand extending as if to take hers. "I'm glad I ran into you. I was hoping you would be willing to accept my dinner invitation. Thorn here tells me you have no work and just need to be ready to leave tomorrow morning. Would I be able to get your time tonight, my dear?"
His fingers brushed hers. Warm. Deliberate. His eyes held hers a beat too long.
Behind him, Liam hadn't moved. He stood in the doorway, one hand in his pocket, the picture of patience. But she felt the weight of his attention — heavy, watchful, waiting.
"I'm sorry, I have not fully finished packing," she lied, and the words came out steadier than she felt. “I’ll have to next time.”
Sebastian's smile widened. "That's all I ask." He released her hand, nodded once toward Liam, and stepped past her toward the door. "Presley, always a pleasure. Liam —" He paused at the threshold, glancing back. "We'll talk soon."
The door closed behind him, leaving the foyer suddenly quiet. Liam's attention remained on her, steady and unreadable. After a moment, he said, “You could have accepted his offer.”
She looked at him, caught off guard by the remark. “Excuse me?”
“Dinner.” He said it as though the explanation should have been obvious. “You could have gone.”
Her spine stiffened. The fear that had been sitting low in her chest twisted into something sharper. Indignation rose fast, hot enough to burn through the caution she'd been holding onto.
She turned to face him fully, her hands dropping to her sides.
“Are you telling me who I can spend my evening with?”
The question landed harder than she'd expected. It hung between them, and for a fraction of a second, something flickered across his face. His jaw tightened, just slightly, and though his eyes never left hers, something behind them shifted. Then the mask settled back into place. The silence held for another breath before he finally spoke.
“No.”
The word was flat and controlled, but the pause before it had said everything. Elena held his gaze for a long moment, letting the silence carry what she couldn't bring herself to say. Then she turned and started up the stairs, slow and deliberate. She didn't run or look back. She climbed each step at a measured pace, one hand resting on the railing, her spine straight as she projected a calm she absolutely did not feel.
The door to her room clicked shut behind her, and she finally let out the breath she'd been holding since she reached the top of the stairs.
Her legs carried her to the bed before her mind could catch up. She dropped onto the mattress, the springs creaking beneath her weight, and pulled out her phone. Her fingers trembled as she unlocked it and opened the photo gallery, stopping on the first image of Liam’s notebook.
The code stared back at her. Sharp, slanted handwriting. Strings of numbers. Letters that didn't form words she recognized. Dates, times, symbols. A diagram that looked like a shipping route but no map to match or refer to.
She squinted at the screen, zooming in on the first page. The handwriting was unfamiliar but precise — each character deliberate, no stray marks, no corrections. It didn’t look like Liam’s. Whoever had written this knew the code by heart.
She switched to her browser and typed a few search terms. Cipher. Code. Letter-to-number substitution. The search results gave her lists of famous ciphers — Caesar, Vigenère, Enigma — nothing she tried helped her crack a private notebook in a coded language she couldn't identify.
She zoomed in on a cluster of numbers near the top of page three. 14-20-02. 19-06-07. 18-09-14. Were they dates?
Her thumb hovered over the screen, then she typed the sequences into a fresh search. Nothing useful. She tried adding "Las Lona" to the query. Nothing. She tried "shipping manifest." Nothing.
The phone grew warm in her hand. The afternoon light through the curtains shifted, lengthening across the floor as the hours passed. She switched between the photos and the browser, back and forth, back and forth, her eyes burning, her brain turning patterns over and over until the letters and numbers blurred into meaningless shapes.
Nothing clicked. Nothing gave way.
She flopped back against the pillows, holding the phone above her face as the latest image glowed in the dimming light. Page six. Another shipping route diagram, another string of numbers she couldn't make sense of.
Vexley.
The name surfaced again, and she pulled up the page where she'd first seen it. She zoomed in, searching for context, for anything that might tell her what the name meant. A dock number. A time. A date. Something she could use.
Her pulse quickened. She saved the page to a separate folder, then switched to the browser and searched the dock number against Las Lona's shipping records. The results were thin: a generic port authority page and a list of berths and tenants that told her almost nothing.
She tried searching the dock numbers, then the dates and shipping records, combining them in different ways and hoping to find a news article, police report, or anything that connected the notebook to something real. Every search led to another dead end. Nothing.
By the time her phone's battery dropped to twenty percent, she lowered it to her chest and stared at the ceiling. The patterns she'd been studying still seemed to swim behind her eyes, but none of them had given her anything she could use.
She needed a computer. A real screen. A real search. But the thought of using the manor's network sent a chill down her spine. If Liam monitored the manor's internet traffic—and she had little doubt he did—any search she made might eventually land on his desk. She couldn't risk it. Not yet. Not until she knew more.
Her stomach growled, loud and insistent, breaking the silence. She pressed a hand to her abdomen, startled by the sound. When had she last eaten? She had skipped breakfast and lunch in her pursuit of information.
She didn't move. The ceiling didn't offer answers. The phone sat dark against her chest, its remaining battery draining second by second.
A knock cut through the quiet.
Her body locked. She shoved the phone under her pillow — quick, automatic — and sat up, smoothing her shirt, forcing her face into something neutral. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she called out, "Come in."
The door swung open, and Presley stood in the threshold, his tall frame silhouetted against the dim hallway light. His peppered hair was immaculate, his tailcoat crisp, his expression as unreadable as ever.
"Miss Rossi." His voice was calm, measured, the same even tone he used for everything. "Dinner will be served in twenty minutes."
Her stomach dropped. Then growled again, betraying her.
Presley's mouth twitched — the barest hint of amusement, gone before she could be sure she'd seen it. "I trust you've had a productive afternoon."
The words were polite, neutral, but something in the way he said them—the pause before productive—sent a prickle across her skin. She forced a smile. “Very. Thank you, Presley.”
He inclined his head a fraction before stepping back into the hallway. The door clicked shut behind him.
Elena sat frozen on the bed, her hands gripping the duvet, her breath shallow. The phone was still hidden beneath the pillow, its evidence burning through the fabric. She needed to move. She needed to go downstairs, sit across from Liam Thorn, and pretend she hadn't just spent hours trying to crack a code that could ruin him.
Her stomach growled again, and she pressed a hand against it, willing it to stop. With a quiet breath, she stood and crossed to the mirror. She ran her fingers through her hair, smoothed the wrinkles from her shirt, and pinched her cheeks to bring some color back. The woman staring back at her looked pale, tired, haunted—but not guilty. Not caught. That, at least, she could work with.
Her phone had become contraband. It looked the same as it had that morning, but now every inch of it seemed to carry evidence. She couldn't imagine taking it downstairs, even though no one would ever know what was inside. It felt like walking through a checkpoint with something forbidden hidden in her pocket. She wanted to leave it anywhere else—the closet, beneath the mattress, inside the bathroom cabinet—somewhere she wouldn't have to feel it against her.
Then she turned, opened the door, and walked toward the dining hall.
The manor was quiet in the evening light. The tall windows along the hallway cast long shadows across the floor, the last of the sun bleeding gold through the glass. She kept her pace steady, her breathing even, her face a careful mask of calm.
The dining hall doors stood open when she reached them. Warm light spilled out, catching the edge of the long oak table, the crystal glasses, the silverware laid with military precision. Two place settings. One at the head of the table. One to its right.
Liam was already seated inside. A light surprise crossed her face, as she rarely saw him at dinner unless they planned it. Always eating in his study or room.
He didn't look up when she entered. His attention was fixed on the glass in his hand — amber liquid, swirling slowly, catching the light. The white shirt he'd worn earlier was still crisp, an extra button undone now, his sleeves rolled to his forearms. A drink at his elbow. The picture of a man who had been waiting.
She took her seat without a word. The chair slid out smoothly, the cushion giving beneath her as she settled in. The table setting was arranged with such precision that it almost felt deliberate—every fork, knife, and spoon perfectly aligned. She laid the napkin across her lap and stared at the empty plate, its white surface gleaming beneath the chandelier.
Neither of them spoke. A full minute passed before Liam finally broke the silence.
“You're quiet.”
His voice was low and unhurried, filling the silence without disturbing it.
She didn't lift her eyes. “I'm just tired.”
“Tired.” He repeated the word, considering it. “You spent the afternoon in your room. Are you feeling unwell?”
Her pulse jumped, but she kept her voice even. “No. Packing takes energy.”
The lie came easily now. Too easily. It hadn't always been that way. Lately, she was getting far too practiced at saying things she hoped he would believe.
He said nothing. She felt his gaze move over her — heavy, slow, a hand trailing across fabric, searching for the seam. She didn't give him the satisfaction. She kept her eyes on the plate, her hands folded in her lap, her breathing measured and even — a clock that refused to strike.
The first course arrived. A server she hadn't noticed set a bowl in front of her — something pale and aromatic, steam curling upward. She picked up her spoon and forced herself to eat, the broth warm against her tongue, the vegetables soft and familiar.
Liam ate in silence across from her. The only sounds were the clink of silverware and the distant hum of the manor settling into evening.
She reached for her wineglass, but before her fingers closed around it, Liam lifted the bottle and refilled it. His eyes never left his plate.
“Thank you.”
He gave the smallest nod and returned to his meal.
She took a sip, suddenly aware of how quiet the room was again.
She finished the soup. The plate was cleared. The next course arrived — fish, flaky and white, drizzled in something that glistened under the chandelier's light. She cut a piece, brought it to her mouth, chewed without tasting.
"I think you should know, Sebastian Hart is not a patient man." His tone remained almost conversational. "Keep making him chase you, and eventually he may just decide the hunt isn't worth it."
She looked up. Met his eyes for the first time since she'd sat down. The fish was cooling on her plate, the sauce losing its sheen beneath the chandelier. "Is that a warning or advice?"
The corner of his mouth moved — not quite a smile, but close. He didn't blink. "Observation."
"I don't need observations about Sebastian Hart." She set down her own fork, the metal clicking hard against the plate, a small violence. "I can handle him myself."
"Can you?"
The question sat between them, sharp-edged, waiting. She could feel the weight of his gaze like a hand on her throat.
She held his eyes. "Yes."
Something passed through him — a flicker of acknowledgment, of reassessment. He picked up his fork and returned to his meal, the silence settling back into place like a curtain falling after a single act. She watched him chew, the precise movement of his jaw, and felt the cold of the wine glass against her palm.
She finished the fish. The plate was cleared.
When she set down her fork, the table was bare. The light from the outside windows had gone dark, the last of the sun swallowed by the horizon.
She pushed back her chair and stood.
"Thank you for dinner." The words came out formal, polite, a wall between them. "I'll finish packing."
Liam didn't rise. He sat back in his chair, the glass of amber liquid in his hand, his eyes tracking her across the room.
"Goodnight, Elena."
She paused at the threshold, lightly turned around to look at him. She expected the words to sound cold, but they didn’t. His posture unchanged.
"Goodnight, Liam."
She closed the dining room door behind her.