And I've been watching him too. I just didn't know it.
The car pulls away from the mansion. The gate closes behind us. And somewhere in the hills, in a house full ofshadows and secrets, Aleksander Mire is standing at a window, watching the taillights disappear into the dark.
I wonder what he's thinking.
I wonder if he saw us in the garden.
I wonder if he cares.
9
Nathan's Introduction
Monika
The snow melted overnight, leaving behind a world that looked washed and wrung out, like laundry hung too long in the rain. I woke to grey light filtering through my curtains and the sound of water dripping from the eaves—a steady, rhythmic percussion that matched the ache behind my eyes.
I hadn't slept.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Gabriel's face. His lips on mine. His hands shaking. The way he saidI've been watching youlike it was the most terrible and wonderful thing he'd ever admitted. I touched my mouth in the dark, trying to preserve the feeling of him, the warmth that had cut through the November cold.
But I also saw the mansion. The chandeliers. The paintings. The way Aleksander watched us from across the table,his grey eyes unreadable, his fingers wrapped around a glass of wine he never seemed to drink. He knew. He had to know. And he hadn't stopped it.
That was the part that kept me awake.
The part that made me pull the blue dress from my body and throw it in the corner like it had betrayed me. The part that made me lie in the dark and wonder if I was being played—by Aleksander, by Gabriel, by both of them. Or if I was playing myself, pretending that any of this could end well.
I fell asleep as the sun rose and woke four hours later to the sound of my phone buzzing.
A car will pick you up at seven. Dinner. Formal.
No please. No explanation. Just Aleksander's voice, clipped and efficient, like he was dictating a memo.
I thought about saying no. I thought about calling in sick, locking the door, pretending I didn't exist. But the money was already in my account—more than I'd made in three months at the diner—and the money had a voice. It whisperedvet schoolandyour father's rentandsurvivalin a tone that sounded like my mother's.
So I got up. I showered. I put on the blue dress again, because it was the only thing I had, and I stared at my reflection and tried to find the girl who'd kissed Gabriel in the snow.
She was still there. Barely.
The mansion looked different in the daylight.
Less forbidding, somehow. The stone was warm in the afternoon sun, and the evergreens that lined the driveway were bright with new snow. The fountain in the center of the drive was still empty, but someone had swept the dead leaves from the basin, and the marble gleamed like bone.
Viktor opened my door. I stepped out into the cold and walked toward the entrance, my borrowed heels clicking on the stone, my breath fogging in front of my face.
The door opened before I knocked. Same man, same flat eyes, same nod. I stepped into the foyer and stopped.
The chandelier was still there. The marble. The staircase that curved up toward the painted ceiling. But there was something different about the air—thicker, charged, like the moment before a storm. I could feel it pressing against my skin, raising the hair on my arms.
"Monika."
I turned.
Nathan Mire was standing at the bottom of the staircase, one hand on the railing, the other tucked into the pocket of his trousers. He was tall—taller than Gabriel, almost as tall as Aleksander—with dark hair that curled at his collar and eyes the color of whiskey in sunlight. He was handsome in a way that felt aggressive, like his face was a weapon he'd learned to wield before he could walk.
He was smiling. It was a beautiful smile—white teeth, perfect symmetry, the kind of smile that belonged in magazines or on billboards or anywhere except on the face of a man who'd grown up in this house.
But there was nothing warm about it. The smile didn't reach his eyes. Those eyes were watching me the way a cat watches a bird—curious, patient, already calculating the odds.
