“Smart answer, but do it anyway.”
She holds my gaze for a long beat, weighing outcomes that all taste like loss. Then she nods once.
“Where?”
“Somewhere Silas doesn’t own.” I text the only person in this town I can almost trust. “My sister will meet us. She has answers I don’t.”
“Your sister works for them?”
“She works for my grandfather. That’s different.”
“You Delanos love your technicalities.”
“We have to. It’s how some of us stay human.”
I offer my arm in an old-fashioned way on purpose. It gives her control. After a heartbeat, she takes it. Her hand is cool, steady.
We leave the terrace for a side exit that the Hollow Club doesn’t favor, moving through corridors drowned in money. The party hums on behind us, oblivious.
Frostbourne looks like a promise in photographs.
Out here, it’s just a house that knows too much.
The real work starts the second we clear its shadow.
Chapter 2
Peyton
Blake Delano drives like a man being chased by ghosts.
His car, a black Audi that's seen better years but purrs like it's been maintained with religious devotion, cuts through Wintervale's snow-covered streets with precision that borders on aggressive. No wasted movement. No hesitation at intersections. He knows this town the way predators know hunting grounds.
I watch him from the passenger seat, cataloging details the way I've been trained since childhood. There’s an unmistakable strength and swagger that he exudes just by breathing that I wonder if he realizes is there. Strong hands on the wheel, no wedding ring, no nervous tells. A small scar above his left eyebrow that's old enough to have faded but deep enough to have hurt. The way his jaw tightens when we pass Wintervale landmarks like the shuttered factory on Ashwood, the anonymous office building on Fifth that houses God-knows-what, says a lot.
He's running from something. Or toward it.
Maybe both.
"You're staring," he says without looking at me.
"You broke a man's wrist on a terrace and told me my life is currency in a game I didn't know I was playing. I'm trying to decide if you're my best option or my worst mistake."
"Fair." He takes a corner too fast, correcting with the kind of muscle memory that says he's done this route a thousand times in worse conditions. "For what it's worth, I'm probably both."
"That's not comforting."
"It's honest."
I lean back against leather that's worn soft in places where other bodies have sat, other women like me, I bet. The heating vents blast warm air that smells faintly of coffee and something sharper—gun oil, maybe, or the particular metallic scent that clings to men who've spent time in places where violence is casual.
My phone buzzes in my clutch. I ignore it.
It buzzes again. Then again.
"Your father?" Blake asks.
"Or someone pretending to care on his behalf." I silence it without checking. "He stopped calling me directly two years ago. Now he has staffers do it. More efficient that way."
