Chapter 1 #3
Gracie squeals and throws her arms around me again.
Over her shoulder, I catch my mother's eye.
Mom's watching me with an expression I can't read. Something worried.
She looks away before I can figure it out.
***
The drive to the estate takes fifteen minutes.
Gracie fills the silence with gossip. Eight years of it. Affairs, bankruptcies, weddings, funerals. The endless small dramas of a small town that thinks it's the whole world.
I nod when I'm supposed to.
But my eyes stay fixed on the road. On the way the landscape changes, growing more manicured with every mile.
More controlled.
The Ashfords have owned this land for generations.
Old Virginia money, the kind that builds libraries and hospital wings and expects the town to be grateful.
Gracie's father was a congressman before he died. Heart attack, five years after their mother's accident.
Left everything to his son.
To him.
The gates appear around a bend.
Wrought iron. Stone pillars. They swing open as Gracie approaches, some invisible system recognizing her car, and my stomach clenches so hard I taste bile.
"Fancy," I manage.
"Elias upgraded security a few years back." She shrugs like it's nothing. "He's very into privacy."
I'll bet he is.
The driveway winds through grounds so perfect they look artificial.
Rolling lawns trimmed to identical height.
Old oaks draped with Spanish moss like something from a gothic novel. Flower beds arranged in patterns that probably cost more than my parents' house.
Beautiful.
And wrong.
I can feel it in my bones, the same wrongness I felt before every ambush, every IED, every moment the world was about to split apart. This place looks like a garden.
It feels like a trap.
Then the house comes into view.
My hands go numb on the door handle.
It's bigger than I remember.
Sprawling white colonial, columns and porches and windows glittering in the late afternoon sun.
The kind of house that ends up in magazines.
The kind that whispers old money, old power, old secrets buried so deep no one will ever find them.
"Home sweet home." Gracie pulls around the circular drive. "Well, not home. Guest house is around back. But you remember the place, right?"
I remember.
I remember sneaking through these halls at sixteen, giggling with Gracie about nothing, pretending I didn't feel watched.
I remember sitting on the porch drinking lemonade, pretending I didn't notice him in the window. Pretending my skin didn't prickle every time he walked into a room.
I remember the garden.
The night before I left.
His fingers wrapped around my wrist tight enough to bruise. His breath against my ear. His voice, low and certain, like he was telling me something I already knew.
I blink and the memory dissolves.
Gracie parks near the guest house. A charming cottage behind the main house, surrounded by gardens, complete with its own little porch.
If I didn't know where I was, I might call it cozy, but I know exactly where I am.
"Let me show you around." Gracie's already out of the car. "Kitchen's stocked. There's a path through the gardens if you want to come up for dinner."
"I'll get settled tonight." I grab my duffel from her trunk. "Rain check?"
"Tomorrow, then. I'm holding you to it." She hugs me one more time, fierce and quick. "I'm so glad you're here, Libby. Everything's going to be okay."
She sounds so sure.
I watch her walk back to her car.
Watch the taillights disappear around the bend.
Then I turn toward the main house.
And the world stops.
He's standing at a second-floor window.
Perfectly still. Silhouette backlit by the dying sun.
I can't see his face clearly from here, but I don't need to.
Six-two, broad shoulders, dark hair. The kind of stillness that isn't calm.
It's patience.
The patience of something that knows how to wait.
I can feel his eyes on me. Can feel them the way you feel a rifle scope before the shot. My skin goes tight. My pulse kicks hard enough that I feel it in my teeth.
Eight years.
Eight thousand miles.
Three combat tours.
I've been shot at, blown up, nearly killed more times than I can count. I've held friends while they bled out in the sand. I've stared down enemies who wanted me dead and didn't blink.
But standing in this driveway, with Elias Ashford's eyes on me, I feel something I haven't felt since I was eighteen years old and running for my life.
Fear.
Real, primal, bone-deep fear.
Not of what he might do.
Of what I might let him.
I force myself to look away first. Force my legs to carry me to the guest house, to open the door, to step inside, to close it behind me.
I lean against it, breathing hard, heart slamming against my ribs.
The cottage is quiet. Pretty. Sunlight streaming through lace curtains.
It feels like a cell.
You're being ridiculous. He was at a window. It doesn't mean anything.
But I know better.
I've spent years knowing better.
He told me I'd come back.
And here I am.
Standing in a cage I walked into with my eyes wide open, and my instincts screaming so loud I can barely hear myself think.
This time, I'm going to fucking listen.