The car pulled up—a black sedan, understated, nothing like the armored tank we'd arrived in. A driver got out, nodded at Silas, and opened the back door for me.
I climbed in without another word.
As we pulled away from Dominion Hall, I looked back once through the rear window.
The mansion sat there, massive and impossible, framed by trees and sky and wealth I couldn't comprehend.
And somewhere inside, a blonde woman who talked about flowers like they mattered was probably still laughing with people who belonged there.
I turned forward and stared at the road ahead.
Privacy.
That's what I needed.
That's what I'd always needed.
And if a part of me wondered what her name was, what her voice sounded like when she wasn't babbling, what it would feel like to have her look at me again without disappointment?—
Well.
That was a problem I'd deal with later.
Or not at all.
7
JOY
The meeting itself blurred once I left Portia’s sitting room.
Not the details—I remembered those clearly. Timelines. Flights. Varieties. The way Portia listened without interrupting, the way she decided things like they were already hers.
But what stayed with me wasn’t the business of it.
It was him.
I’d stepped outside because my chest felt tight in a way that had nothing to do with nerves or intimidation. I needed air. Space. Something real under my feet after all that velvet confidence and whispered laughter.
That was when I’d run into him.
Not literally—thank God—but close enough to feel like the universe had nudged us into the same narrow strip of stone and green at the exact wrong moment.
He’d been tall. Broad. Quiet in a way that didn’t invite conversation. The kind of man who looked like he knew how to hurt people and had done it often enough that it no longer showed on his face.
Military, I’d thought immediately. Or something adjacent to it.
I’d seen men like that around Charleston before—at the airport, in certain restaurants, moving through the city with a watchful stillness that made you step aside without knowing why. They’d always seemed … distant. Dangerous in a way I’d never been curious about.
Until him.
The exchange itself had been brief. Awkward. Worse than awkward.
He’d dismissed flowers like they were meaningless. A waste. Said it flat, like it was a fact, not an opinion.
And I—sweet, polite, careful me—had snapped.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. But enough that my voice had sharpened, enough that I’d said something true and personal and then walked away before I could regret it.
