My bare feet were silent on the stone floors as I made my way to the great hall where Millie waited beneath the portrait of my grandfather. In the dim light, her face was drawn tight, and she held a wrapped package in both hands as if it might bite her.
“It was left at the gate, my lord. The groundskeeper found it twenty minutes ago.” Her voice was low, hushed, as if she sensed danger seeping from it. “No one saw who delivered it.”
I took it from her. The wrap was plain brown, the kind you could buy at any shop. No postmark. No return address. My name was printed in block letters—not handwritten.
“Thank you, Millie. That will be all.”
She hesitated, then retreated without another word.
I carried the package to the library and locked the door behind me.
I set it on the desk and stood over it, studying the clean folds, the neat tape, the utter anonymity of it. The instincts I’d honed during my tenure with MI6, then Unit 23, screamed a warning.
I retrieved a letter opener from the drawer, sliced through the tape with one clean motion, and the paper fell away. I did the same to open the box, then dumped its contents.
A manila envelope landed with a heavy thud. It was thick with contents I already knew I didn’t want to see.
I opened it too, then upended it over the desk.
Photos spilled across the polished wood.
The first image showed Oliver and Ophelia walking the grounds of Greymarch. They were laughing, her hand on his arm, their faces turned toward each other with the easy intimacy of lovers. Behind them rose the eastern tower of my castle, unmistakable with the backdrop of the gray Highland sky.
Someone had been on the grounds of Greymarch.
The second image showed me standing at the library window. This window. The silhouette was clear enough—my height, my build, the distinctive line of my shoulders. I was looking out at the grounds, unaware that I was being observed, captured, and documented.
The third showed all three of us in the conservatory. Oliver’s brow was furrowed, and Ophelia leaned on me, with her hand on my chest. My arm was around her waist, pulling her close.
I spread the remaining images across the desk with numb fingers. A dozen, then two dozen, then more. Each one a violation. Each one proof that our privacy had been an illusion.
The progression told a story. Walks on the grounds, day after day. Dinner in the formal dining room, visible on the opposite side of the tall windows. The three of us in the library, tangled together on the sofa. Every tender moment and stolen glance—all of it recorded by someone with a telephoto lens and the patience of a predator.
Except those weren’t the worst of them. My hands went still as I sifted through images from the Thorned Thistle. The semi-private room. Glass walls designed for exhibitionism, for the thrill of being seen by willing observers inside the club. Not for this. Never for this.
Most were from our scene earlier tonight, captured in crisp detail by someone who should never have been able to get close enough to take these shots.
I had to look away and breathe deeply until the roaring in my ears subsided.
My mind raced with the implications. Someone had gotten inside the club. Past the security measures that Rafe had spent years building. Past the vetted membership,the private entrances, the staff who would die before betraying a member’s identity.
I turned over the final image and found a single sheet of paper beneath it.
The words were typed and centered on the page. No signature. No identifying marks.
Did you think no one was watching? They leave tonight. The photos go public if they’re still there by morning.
I read it once. Then again.
Whoever sent this wanted Oliver and Ophelia gone.
I gripped the edge of the desk and willed myself to breathe. To think. To push past the ice in my veins.
Who?
The question spiraled outward, branching into a thousand possibilities. One of the founding partners’ enemies? A rival establishment? Someone I’d crossed in my years with Unit 23—a target who’d escaped, a colleague I’d wronged, an enemy I’d made without knowing it?
The list of people who might want to destroy me was long. I’d spent nine years doing the kind of work that bred grudges. I’d killed in service to the Crown. I’d ruined lives, ended careers, toppled criminal empires. Any one of a hundred people might want revenge.
