“What did he want in return?”
She looks at me, something earnest and unflinching in her eyes. “He wanted Riley safe. And he wanted me out of that house.”
The kitchen feels quieter suddenly.
“He offered me work,” she continues. “Said I could leave anytime. That I owed him nothing. I didn’t believe him at first.”
“But you stayed.”
“I stayed,” she says simply. “Because he meant it.”
I glance around the kitchen. The spotless counters. The careful order of everything. “So…why here? Why run the house instead of, I don’t know, marrying Riley and disappearing somewhere sunny?”
She laughs, real and loud. “Oh, trust me, Riley’s tried to convince me to move but...”
“But?”
“But Lucian doesn’t trust just anybody,” she says, sobering. “Especially not in his home. This place is the only space he doesn’t have to be on guard. The only place where he’s allowed to breathe.”
I think of Lucian at night. Of the way he comes apart in the dark. Of how carefully he controls every inch of his world.
“He deserves that,” Mara continues. “To feel safe where he sleeps. To know the people around him aren’t going to betray him.”
“And you don’t mind?” I ask. “Working instead of…everything else?”
She smiles at me then, gentle and knowing. “Elias, I don’t work for him because I have to. I work for him because I want to.”
I look down at my hands.
“Lucian is a deeply kind man,” she says quietly. “But kindness is a luxury someone like him doesn’t get to show. Not openly. Not without consequences.”
My chest tightens.
“He carries his father’s sins,” she continues. “Every brutal decision. Every hard line. Because if he doesn’t, someone else will. And that someone might hurt Riley. Or me. Or anyone else he’s protecting.” She eyes me knowingly.
“He didn’t become this way because he wanted to,” Mara says. “He became this way because someonehadto.”
The weight of that settles over me, heavy and inescapable.
I’ve spent weeks seeing Lucian as a force. A presence. A man who commands and takes and decides. I’ve felt his gentleness in private, but I always thought of it as something accidental. Something he didn’t quite mean to give.
Now I see it differently.
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
She smiles. “For what?”
The kitchen door opens behind us. I feel warm hands skate around my waist as Lucian presses a kiss to my neck.
The room shifts when he enters, like gravity recalibrating itself. He’s in a dark suit, jacket still buttoned, expression smooth and unreadable. But his eyes soften the second they land on Mara.
He crosses the space without hesitation and presses a kiss to her cheek.
“Riley wants to take you out this weekend,” he says calmly. “Dinner. Somewhere loud, apparently. You can have the weekend off.”
Mara beams. “That sounds wonderful. You sure you won’t need me?”
“I think we’ll manage.” Lucian’s dark eyes heat as he glances at me. Oh.
