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He grunts.

That’s it. Just a grunt.

It’s fine. He’s an ass. It’s part of his charm.

That’s what I’ll tell people if they ask, anyway.

Still, a small, petty part of me sours at the fact that he can’t even pretend to like me. Not ideal, considering we have a whole week of this charade ahead of us. If he doesn’t get his act together, I will be forced to retaliate. Loudly. Probably in public, simply because I know he’d loathe that.

Before Evelyn can comment further, the air in the room shifts, commandeered by the presence of a woman who enters as if she’s just emerged from a three-day spa retreat rather than the aftermath of a violent murder.

Nora Mayfair, Emily’s aunt.

The Mayfairs have enough houses on this estate to qualify as their own zip code, but despite that, every single one of them seems magnetically drawn to the main house. Nora and her son, Baryn, technically live in the second and third mansions over, but from what I’ve seen, that distinction means absolutely nothing.

After Henry died, it just made sense for Victoria and Emily to move in with Evelyn. Neither of them wanted her to be alone. And when Peter went to prison not long after, Victoria never left. Her own house was gradually abandoned, left to gather dust like the rest of the things she couldn’t bring herself to face.

Nora is draped in a silk kimono, casually elegant, her long blonde hair curled to glossy perfection. The oversized sunglasses perched on her nose are likely worth more than my entire net worth, possibly even my entire bloodline.

“Ugh,” she whines, throwing herself onto a velvet armchair with all the drama of a woman who has never had to struggle for anything. “It’s a nightmare out there. Those reporters are legitimately insane. I had to bribe the security guy just to get up the driveway to my own fucking house.”

Emily winces. “They’re still camped outside?”

“Like vultures.”

Beside me, Theo shifts, the analytical gears already turning in his head. I don’t have to ask to know he’s cataloging every detail—every word, every reaction, every Mayfair eccentricity.

Nora catches him watching her and tips her sunglasses down just enough to peer over the top, considering blue eyes raking over him like she’s contemplating whether or not he’d make a suitable addition to her collection of expensive things.

“And who is this fine gentleman?” she purrs.

“This is Theo,” I say quickly, before she can dig any deeper. “My boyfriend.”

Nora leers, her lips curling like she doesn’t quite believe me but finds it amusing all the same. “Lucky you.”

Theo makes a noise that could, if you weren’t paying attention, be mistaken for a cough. But I am paying attention, and I know him well enough to recognize it for what it really is—indignant suffering.

And then, as if this family couldn’t possibly get more dramatic, someone drawls from the doorway, dripping with lazy disdain. “Oh, great. More houseguests.”

I don’t have to turn around to know who it is.

Because of course it’s Baryn.

Every interaction I’ve ever had with him has left me with steam pouring out of my ears. He has that special talent—one I assume is either inherited or finely honed over years of being intolerable.

Which is why it still throws me, even now, that once he was actually kind to me. I’d shown up at the estate in the middle of a complete breakdown. Laurel had just died, and I couldn’t breathe in my own house anymore.

I went there looking for Emily, only to find out she wasn’t home. She was away at a competition with her horses, and I’d been too lost in myself to bother calling or texting before showing up unannounced.

It was Baryn who let me in. Baryn who sat on the floor beside Emily’s bed while I cried into her pillow, offering me water and snacks and, for the first time, not a single sarcastic remark. I stayed for hours. He never left.

And then the next time I saw him, he was back to being the pompous, sharp-tongued asshole I’d come to know and loathe. Like it never happened. Like I imagined the whole thing.

He’s leaning against the doorframe, exuding a brand of conceit that only comes with obscene wealth and an utter lack of consequences. Blond hair that falls just right—it’s never met a bad angle in its life. His white button-down is open just enough to look deliberately disheveled, the sleeves rolled up to reveal tanned forearms. He wears a smirk that could probably make rational women throw their entire moral compass into the ocean.

I would be charmed if he wasn’t such a blatant jackass.

Baryn’s gaze drifts lazily to Theo, scanning him with mild amusement, and then—without so much as a polite nod—he turns his full attention to me, as if Theo is no more remarkable than a custom mahogany coat rack his grandmother commissioned during a wine bender and then left to gather dust in the east wing.