I’d stopped listening after that and gone to my room, but their words followed me. I’m not naïve—I know my parents see me as a project that needs managing rather than a daughter. They had a perfect, tragic child who died young, and then me: the replacement baby who’s never quite measured up to a ghost.
The cottage comes into view through the trees, and some of the tension leaves my shoulders. It really does look like something from a fairy tale with its stone walls, arched wooden door, and climbing roses that have gone wild over the past decade. The roses are dormant now, just brown vines clinging to the walls, but in spring they’ll bloom pink and white and smell like heaven.
When I open the door, I stop dead.
Something’s wrong.
The kitchen area looks… different. Not drastically, but enough that I pick up on it immediately. The fruit bowl has been moved slightly to the left. One of the dishtowels is folded differently than I remember. And there’s a faint scent in the air that doesn’t belong—something masculine and outdoorsy that cuts through the cottage’s usual smell of old roses and lemon oil.
My heart beats faster, that familiar anxiety response that’s been my companion since childhood. Every sound becomes amplified: the tick of the mantle clock, the whisper of wind through the trees outside, the creak of old wood settling.
Someone’s been here.
I set the basket down carefully and move through the cottage like a detective, cataloging every small change. In the living area, one of the throw pillows on the sofa bears a slight indentation. The bedroom door, which I always keep closed, stands slightly ajar.
When I peek inside, I see the quilt has been disturbed. Someone actually slept in my bed!
Panic flutters in my chest—sharp, cold. I should call Security. Call Father. Call someone. But then logic fights its way through the fear: whoever was here is gone now. Nothing’s missing. Nothing’s broken. And honestly? It’s my own fault. I never lock the cottage. It never occurred to me that someone might actually… use it.
A vagrant, probably. Someone cold, desperate, someone who saw an unlocked cottage and took their chance.
The idea should terrify me more than it does. But fear is quickly smothered by something else—something painfully familiar.
No one would believe me. Not about a moved pillow. Not about a rumpled quilt. They’d give me that look, the one that saysYou’re imagining things, Charity.
I’ve had a lifetime of that look.
I blow out a breath, make coffee in the French press, and settle into the window seat overlooking the garden, cradling the warm mug between my palms. The cottage feels unsettled, like someone exhaled in a room meant to stay untouched. I add a mental note to ask housekeeping to change the sheets. Fresh linens might make this place feel like mine again.
Across the garden, my workshop crouches in the converted carriage house, its windows dark and uninviting. I should go over there and try to wrestle with the sculpture that’s been fighting me for months, but the thought fills me with the same dread I woke up with this morning. The piece is different—darker, heavier, like it’s dragging something ancient out of me every time I pick up my tools.
I should call Security. That’s what a rational person would do. But I can already imagine the conversation—how it would end with Father being informed.
"Nothing’s actually missing, Charity. You’re being overly sensitive."
I swallow hard. I can’t face that today.
As I finish my coffee, I make a mental note—lock the cottage from now on.That’s reasonable. Even Father couldn’t argue with that.
My phone buzzes with a text from Mother.Lunch at the club today. Wear the blue dress.
I gather my basket and head back toward the mansion, my brief moment of independence already fading. The blue dress is hanging in my closet—the one that makes me look like a porcelain doll, which is exactly why Mother likes it.
Twenty minutes later, I’m dressed and sitting in the passenger seat of Mother’s Mercedes, looking like the sweet, unthreatening Charity Pembroke everyone expects me to be.
Chapter Three
Draco
The coin rolls across my knuckles in a steady rhythm as I make my way through the shadowed trees separating the cottage from the main house, muscle memory guiding my fingers while my eyes adjust to the shadows. It’s past midnight, and the autumn air carries a sharp bite that promises winter isn’t far behind.
Three days I’ve been using this place, and it still feels like a miracle.
I discovered it by accident that first night—broke, pissed off, and looking for somewhere to crash after getting cleaned out by kids running my own con. The cottage appeared through the trees like something from a fairy tale, windows dark, door unlocked, practically begging to be borrowed.
Rich people,I thought at the time.Living in a different universe where crime doesn’t exist.
But now I know better. This isn’t just rich—this is old money, the kind that builds storybook cottages for theirkids and leaves them perfectly maintained for decades. The kind that never locks doors because they’ve never had to worry about people like me.
