The serpent motifs at the estate. The masks at the gala. The way the staff moved like they were following a script no one else could see.
It's real. Whatever I stumbled into, it's not just one man's darkness. It's something bigger. Something organized.
I search for "Serpent Brotherhood" and find nothing. A few fantasy novels, a video game, a heavy metal band. Nothing that connects to the Ambroses, to the city, to anything real.
Whoever they are, they've scrubbed themselves from the internet. Or they were never there to begin with.
I try other searches. "Ambrose family scandal." "Ambrose brothers' investigation." "Ambrose criminal." Each one returns nothing but glowing press coverage and charitable foundations.
Then I try "Ambrose family death."
The results are different.
An obituary from fifteen years ago. Margaret Ambrose, wife of Edward Ambrose, mother of Gabriel, Josiah, and Benedict. Died of a sudden illness at forty-three. The funeral was private. Donations were requested for a children's literacy fund.
Another obituary, ten years ago. Edward Ambrose, patriarch of the family, dead of a heart attack at sixty-one. The article describes him as "a titan of industry" and "a devoted family man."
I stare at the screen, trying to read between the lines. Sudden illness. Heart attack. The euphemisms of wealthy families who don't want questions asked.
What really happened to Gabriel's parents?
I close the laptop and sit in the gathering dark, watching the shadows lengthen across my floor.
Serpent Brotherhood.
My mother's voice echoes in my head:If anyone seems interested in you, you'll tell me, won't you?
She knows something. She's always known something. The way she tensed when I mentioned the Ambrose name. The way she warned me about powerful people. The way she's spent my whole life looking over her shoulder, jumping at shadows, moving us from place to place until I was old enough to ask questions she wouldn't answer.
What does she know? What is she so afraid of?
And does it have anything to do with the man who's been watching me?
I should call her. Should demand answers, push past her evasions, force her to tell me the truth.
But I'm tired. So tired. And some part of me is afraid of what I might learn.
Instead, I sit in the dark and watch the dahlia on my table, its petals black as a bruise, black as dried blood, black as the inside of a locked room where a man died five days ago.
You were always meant to be mine.
I don't know where the thought comes from. It doesn't feel like my own. It feels like his voice, whispering in my ear, patient and certain.
He's not going to stop. The flower, the encounter at the market, the card in my pocket—they're not endings. They're beginnings. He's courting me the way a spider courts a fly, spinning silk so fine I won't feel it until I'm already wrapped.
I should run. Pack a bag and get in my van and drive until I run out of road.
But where would I go? I have no money. No plan. No one I could trust to hide me.
And something tells me he would find me anyway.
The room is fully dark now. I haven't turned on any lights. Haven't moved from the couch. The business card is still on the floor where I left it, a pale rectangle in the shadows.
My phone rings.
The sound is so loud in the silence that I jerk upright, my heart slamming against my ribs. I stare at the screen, expecting Bea, expecting my mother, expecting anyone but—
Unknown number.
