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She put the phone away, unanswered, and watched the neighborhood give way to the highway instead, the last of the afternoon light turning warm and orange against the buildings sliding past.

“She likes you,” Romily said finally, because someone had to say it out loud and he showed no sign of volunteering.

“I noticed.”

“She’s not easy to impress. She once made a contractor cry over grout selection. He left the house and sat in his van for twenty minutes before he could drive. Take the win where you find it.”

“I intend to. I intend to take every win currently available to me, starting now and continuing indefinitely.”

She glanced at him, watching the easy, unbothered set of his shoulders, a man who’d walked into the one room in her life he couldn’t control and had simply let it happen to him instead of fighting it, the way he fought nearly everything else. That, more than the aphid conversation, more than the honest answer about kindness, was the detail she kept circling back to, turning it over the way she’d turn a finished piece under a lamp, looking for the flaw that would tell her not to trust it.

She didn’t find one.

“You didn’t try to win her over.”

“No.”

“Most people try. Everyone who’s ever come to that house has tried, at some point, whether they meant to or not, whether they even noticed themselves doing it.”

“I know how to win people over when it matters. I’ve built an empire doing exactly that.” He kept his eyes on the road, voice even, the same unvarnished honesty he’d used on her mother an hour ago. “It didn’t feel like the moment for it. Your mother would have known, and you’d have known I was performing, and I’d rather lose that particular game than win it dishonestly.”

“That’s a very calculated way of saying you weren’t calculating, you realize.”

“I’m deep like that.”

She almost laughed, and didn’t quite, and reached over to find his hand again, the same place he’d claimed it before they’d gone inside, some quiet piece of her having spent the whole visit waiting to get it back. He caught her fingers without looking away from the road, thumb moving once over her knuckles, and she watched the rest of the drive happen in a silence with nothing uncomfortable left in it — no armor required, no deflection necessary, a woman who’d spent a decade sharpening every possible reason not to need anyone, sitting three feet from a man who’d spent an hour in her mother’s kitchen without once needing to be anyone other than exactly who he was.

He walked her to her door instead of idling at the curb, in no hurry about it, the same way he was never in a hurry about anything that mattered to him, and kissed her goodnight there on the step, one hand braced against the frame, in no visible rush to be anywhere else.

“Lock this behind me.”

“I know how doors work, Norden.”

“I know you do. I’m saying it anyway.” He kissed her once more, brief this time, and stepped back only once she’d turned the deadbolt, satisfied. “Sleep. I’ll call you in the morning.”

She thought about Renata, briefly, the way she still did sometimes without meaning to — the version of trust that had cost her everything the last time she’d extended it to someone who mattered, someone she’d once believed had earned it fairly. This didn’t feel like that. She turned the comparison over once, carefully, the way she’d turn a piece of glass to check it for hairline cracks before deciding it was sound enough to use, and found, for once, that the comparison didn’t hold up under the weight she was putting on it.

She didn’t say the thing on her mind, which was far larger than the drive home had room for.

It followed her inside anyway, and sat with her long after he’d gone, turning itself over and over until it started to look less like a problem and more like a fact she was finally ready to stop arguing with.

FOURTEEN

NORDEN

Three weeks in, he hadn’t made the decision lightly, and he couldn’t keep putting it off much longer either way.

His father was going to find out about Romily regardless of what Norden did next — the only real question left on the table was who told him, and Norden had exactly one acceptable answer to that question. It wasn’t Darius, delivering the news over drinks with the relish of a man who considered gossip a competitive sport.

It wasn’t Victor, logging it as a routine security update between two threat briefings. It wasn’t going to filter through the household staff, or a photograph someone happened to catch, or any of the dozen accidental channels information moved through in a family this old and this thoroughly watched.

It was going to be Norden himself, standing in the estate’s front hall with Romily beside him, refusing to let anyone else narrate the most important thing currently happening in his life.

She’d agreed to come with less hesitation than he’d expected and more than she’d admitted to.

The estate announced itself the way it always had — stone and proportion and sprawling grounds, architecture built by people operating on a timeline most institutions never reached. The drive alone took longer than the trip from the city, gates giving way to grounds so immaculate, they looked maintained rather than grown, hedges trimmed into shapes that had made sense to somebody two centuries ago and had never been questioned since.

“Somebody spent a lot of money convincing this many bushes to look exactly like every other bush.”