She says it’s a request, but we both know I’m not really being offered a choice.
I glance down at my clothes. Same jeans and blouse I was wearing when I walked into Hewhay's a lifetime ago, but they're wrinkled now, slept-in looking even though I didn't sleep in them. I smell like stress and stale fear and the faint ghost of that bookshop tea.
Not exactly how I'd choose to face an interrogation, but captives can’t be choosers, right?.
"Coming," I say.
The woman who leads me through the house is middle-aged, efficient, her dark hair pulled back in a severe bun. She doesn't make conversation. Doesn't look at me except to ensure I'm following. I'm a task to be completed, nothing more.
We go down the main staircase, through a hallway I didn't see yesterday, and stop in front of a pair of heavy wooden doors. The woman knocks once, waits for a response I don't hear, and then opens the door and steps aside.
"Miss Sutton," she announces.
I step into my captor’s study, which is unsurprisingly...immaculate, and the photographer in me appreciates it. The composition and the lines. The way light falls through tall windows onto dark wood and leather. Built-in bookshelves line two walls, filled with volumes arranged by height and color. A massive desk dominates the center of the room, its surface empty except for a single pen, a single notepad, and a laptop closed with geometric precision.
No clutter. No warmth. No photographs, no mementos, no evidence that a human being actually works here rather than a very organized machine.
This room reveals him, I realize. The rest of the estate is impressive but impersonal—the kind of grandeur that comes with old money, maintained by staff, existing independent of whoever happens to live there. But this space? This ishis.Every inch of it designed for control, for order, for the absolute elimination of chaos.
And behind the desk, not rising as I enter, is the man himself.
Devyn is in a charcoal suit today, perfectly tailored, the kind that probably costs more than six months of my rent. He's holding a pen, tapping it against the desk in a quick, restless rhythm.Tap tap tap.Even seated, even still, there's an energy to him. An impatience that seems to hum just beneath the surface.
The door closes behind me.
He doesn't offer me a seat. Doesn't greet me. Just looks at me with those golden eyes, and I feel it in my chest. A tightening. An awareness that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with something I don't want to name.
Not now, Bailey. Not ever. Focus.
"Tell me who sent you."
No preamble. No pleasantries. Just the accusation, sharp and direct.
"No one sent me." My voice comes out steadier than I expected. Small miracle, given that my heart is trying to beat its way out of my chest.
“Then explain how you ended up in my chapel.”
I shouldn’t tell him the truth. I should make something up. Something plausible enough for him to consider letting me go. That’s the smartest and safest thing to do—
“I fell asleep in a bookshop,” I blurt out, “and woke up watching your bride run away."
—but my mouth gets me in trouble before my brain can take control.
Bailey, you idiot.
“A bookshop.”
One second there's that restless energy, that constant motion, and the next—
Stillness.
"Hewhay's," I find myself elaborating even though I feel I’m just digging a deeper hole for myself by doing so. "I don't know if you've heard of it—"
“Go on.”
Those two words...nearly knock me off my feet because it speaks volumes. Him asking me to continue instead of telling me I’ve lost my mind?
“Have you been there?” I blurt out. “Is that why—”
