A house built to keep things in. A house built to trap. My hands curl into fists. He kidnapped me. My own father agreed to it. Sold me like stock to settle debts and buy time, wrapped it up in talk of survival and honour like that makes it cleaner.
I laugh, bitter and breathless.Of course he did.I cross to the mirror and barely recognise the woman staring back at me. Pale. Furious. Silk-clad like a bride already halfway to the altar.
“I’ll kill him,” I whisper—to Finn, to my da, to anyone who thought this was acceptable. “I’ll burn them all.”
The promise steadies me. I straighten my shoulders, chin lifting. Pain or not, stitches or not, I will not be quiet. I will not be soft just because they dressed me like something precious.
I turn toward the door and quietly open it. I don’t shout. That would be giving him something. So I walk. Bare feet on stone. Silk whispering against my legs. Every step measured, spine straight, face composed like I’m heading into a meeting I intend to win. The house watches me as I move through it—lads pausing mid-conversation, eyes tracking, the air shifting as word spreads without a single word being said.
She’s awake.
I don’t rush. I don’t falter. I follow the corridor I remember from years ago, past rooms that smell like leather and smoke and old decisions, until I reach the office at the end.
The door is ajar. I push it open. Finn is seated behind the desk, sleeves rolled, jacket discarded, posture relaxed in that infuriating way that suggests he owns not just the room but the air inside it. Three of his crew are with him—leaning, talking low, maps and papers spread across the desk.
Every single one of them looks up. Finn’s eyes are already on me. They don’t soften. They don’t widen. They don’t flick anywhere else—not to the silk, not to the bare feet, not to the bandage beneath it all. Just my face. Steady. Assessing. Possessive as hell. The room holds its breath.
“Out,” he says.
One word. Calm. Absolute. No one hesitates. Chairs scrape back. Papers are gathered. No one looks at me twice. They file past likeghosts, shutting the door behind them with a quiet finality that lands somewhere deep in my chest.
Finn never breaks eye contact. The silence stretches as I step fully into the room and close the door myself.
“Did you sleep?” he asks.
The question is neutral. Not kind. Not cruel. Like he’s asking about the weather. I stop a few feet from his desk. Fold my hands loosely in front of me.Lady Malloy, called to order.
“Where’s my Da?” I ask.
His jaw tightens. Just a fraction. “Safe.”
“And satisfied?” I continue. “Happy with the price he got for me?”
He stands then—slow, deliberate—rising to his full height behind the desk. He doesn’t come closer. He doesn’t need to. “You wore yourself out last night,” he says. “I won’t have you tearin’ stitches again.”
I smile. It’s not pretty. “You don’t get to tell me what I won’t do,” I say calmly. “You don’t get to decide my body. Or my life. Or who I marry.”
His mouth curves. Sharp. Familiar. Dangerous. “Already did.”
The room feels smaller now. Tighter. Like the walls are listening. I tilt my head. “You really think I won’t put a knife in you again?”
That does it. He moves—not fast, not slow. One step around the desk. Another toward me. He stops just inside my space, close enough that I can smell coffee and smoke andhim.
“I think,” he says quietly, “that you’ll try.”
I meet his gaze, unblinking. “Then you’re stupider than I thought.”
A beat… then he smiles. And I know—bone-deep, sinking—that the war has well and truly begun. He doesn’t answer my threat. Instead, he turns away from me. That alone rattles me more than if he’d grabbed my throat again.
He crosses the office to the far wall, where a low cabinet sits beneath the window. He unlocks it without looking back at me. One clean motion. No flourish. Then he lifts something out. My breath catches so hard it hurts.
The violin.Myviolin.
Dark wood. Worn edges. The faint scratch along the lower bout from when I dropped it rushing out of the chapel all those years ago. The case is gone. The instrument bare in his hands like it belongs there. Like it belongs to him.
“You didn’t,” I say, the words coming out wrong. Thin. Stripped.
He turns then, finally looking at me again. “I did,” he replies. “Pulled it from your old place before it got cleared out.”
