Chapter 2 #2
The castle without Keir feels like a body without a heartbeat. Before you would have heard rock music resounding through the halls, laughter and food, and the occasional party. But now it’s silent.
Callum steps into the entry hall and stops. His gaze sweeps over the familiar details: the worn runner rug, the old portraits staring down with judgment, the coat rack where Keir always tossed his jacket instead of hanging it properly.
Callum’s mouth opens. “I’m back,” he says automatically. But this time, there is no response.
His voice echoes back at him.
No reply.
Memories hit like fists.
Keir in this hall, arms folded, furious after Callum showed up drunk at seventeen, knuckles split and lip bleeding from a fight Callum couldn’t even remember starting.
You want to stay here? You follow my rules. You get your head on straight. You stop trying to die.
Callum had laughed then, bitter and defiant. “Why do you care?”
Keir had stared at him a long moment, then said, “Because you’re here. Because your father would want me to kick your butt and keep you from dying.”
As if that was enough.
It had been.
Another memory: Callum at the kitchen table, trying to read a contract with words too small and too many pages, ready to throw it across the room.
Keir had yanked it back. “Read it. Every word. Don’t let anyone take your life because you were too lazy to learn.”
“Why are you doing this?” Callum had demanded.
Keir had shrugged. “Someone should’ve done it for me.”
Callum drops his bag by the door and moves deeper into the castle, touching things without thinking, stone walls, the banister worn smooth by centuries, the edge of a table scarred with old burns and old laughter.
The music room door is half open.
He pushes it wider.
Dust motes float in the weak light. The fireplace is cold. Keir’s favorite guitar rests on its stand, strings slack, silent.
Callum crosses the room, knees suddenly unsteady. He sits on the piano bench as if the weight of his body has finally caught up to him. He stares at the guitar until his vision blurs.
“You didn’t tell me,” he whispers into the quiet. “You didn’t…tell me how to do this without you.”
His throat tightens, and grief claws up, sharp and ugly. Callum presses his fist into his chest like he can push the pain down where it belongs.
Orphans weren’t supposed to get second chances.
He’d already lost his father at twelve, lost him to fire and wreckage and a headline that said tragic accident. He’d lost his mother in every way that mattered when she sent him away at fourteen, choosing a new life over the son who didn’t fit.
Keir had been the man who’d filled that hole.
Not gently. Not with sentimental speeches.
With presence. With discipline. With a place at the table and rules that meant someone cared whether Callum lived or died.
Now that is gone.
Footsteps echo in the corridor, measured and cautious.
Callum wipes his face with the heel of his hand and forces his shoulders back. He refuses to look like a child who’s been abandoned. Though right now his chest aches so hard that he fears he is having a heart attack.
A man stands in the doorway, mid-fifties, neat suit, eyes tired.
“Mr. Fraser,” he says softly. “Andrew Bell. We spoke earlier.”
Callum nods once. His voice is rough. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Callum’s jaw clenches. “So am I.”
Bell’s gaze flicks to the guitar, then back. “We should talk. There are arrangements and legal matters.”
Callum stands, legs stiff, and follows Bell into the study.
The study looks wrong. Keir’s absence is everywhere, an unfinished glass on the desk, papers stacked haphazardly, a jacket draped over a chair like Keir might come back to claim it.
Bell closes the door behind them. The click sounds too final.
“Please sit,” Bell says.
Callum doesn’t want to sit. Sitting feels like surrender. He does it anyway, because Keir taught him you could be hurt and still be smart.
Bell opens a folder. “Keir MacLaren’s will is…straightforward in some ways and complicated in others.”
“Just tell me what I need to do,” Callum says tightly.
“You are the executor.” Bell studies him for a moment, then speaks carefully. “But, there is a matter of next of kin.”
Callum’s eyes narrow. “Next of kin?”
Bell clears his throat. “Keir MacLaren had a daughter.”
The sentence doesn’t land. It detonates.
Callum’s body goes rigid. “What?”
That can’t be possible. He’d never mentioned having a child of his own.
“A daughter,” Bell repeats gently, as if Callum might not have heard English the first time. “Isla MacLaren. She is, legally, his child. His heir.”
Callum stares at him.
“No,” he says, voice low and dangerous. “No. That’s not possible.”
Why hadn’t the press mentioned her?
“It is,” Bell says. “Keir acknowledged her. Paternity is documented. She is his sole biological child.”
Callum’s hands curl into fists so tight, his knuckles ache.
Keir never talked about a daughter.
Not once.
Keir had told Callum about addiction and regret and mistakes made on tour. He’d confessed to failures with brutal honesty, like he believed the only way to survive was to drag the truth into the light and stare it down.
But a daughter?
“You’re telling me,” Callum says slowly, each word edged with disbelief, “that the man who raised me had a child he never mentioned?”
Bell nods. “I understand this is a shock.”
Shock doesn’t cover it.
It feels like betrayal.
Like Keir had kept a locked room in the castle and never trusted Callum with the key.
“She’s coming here?” Callum asks, voice flat.
“Yes,” Bell says. “She’s currently in the United States. She has been informed of Keir’s death and will be arriving soon. We’ll need her presence for certain legal formalities.”
Callum’s stomach turns.
A stranger walking through these halls.
A daughter stepping into a life Keir never spoke of.
And Callum – who had been rescued at fourteen, felt like he was twelve years old again, staring at a television screen while someone says no survivors.
His voice comes out rough. “Why didn’t he tell me?”
Bell’s expression softens with something like regret. “I can’t speak to Keir’s reasons. But I can tell you the will includes provisions that suggest…he expected conflict.”
“Conflict,” Callum repeats, bitter.
Bell glances at the folder. “The castle. The estate. The rights. Keir’s holdings are significant.”
Callum’s gaze drifts to the stone walls, the shelves, the desk where Keir had sat pretending paperwork didn’t bore him. This place isn’t just property. It’s proof. It’s belonging.
The only real home Callum has ever had. And losing the castle would be crushing.
“You’re saying she gets the castle,” Callum says quietly. “But he said I was going to inherit the castle.”
“I’m saying,” Bell replies, “that the will acknowledges her legal claim. And that Keir also made arrangements for you.”
Callum snaps his eyes back. “Arrangements?”
Bell’s mouth tightens. “Yes. Keir was…very clear about your importance to him.”
Callum goes silent, the words refusing to come. Because that’s the part that hurts worst, Keir had cared. Callum knows he had. He knows it in every rule Keir enforced, every late-night talk, every time Keir showed up when no one else did.
And yet Keir had still kept this secret.
Bell continues, “There will be a meeting when Miss MacLaren arrives. Until then, I recommend you rest.”
Rest.
As if Callum can sleep in a castle that suddenly feels like it might be taken from him.
As if he can close his eyes without seeing fire and wreckage, without hearing Keir’s voice telling him to get his head on straight, without feeling the cold hollow of being orphaned, again.
Callum stands abruptly from the couch, his balance teetering.
Bell looks up. “Mr. Fraser—”
Callum’s voice is raw. “Tell me one thing.”
“Yes?”
“Did Keir…did he ever look for her?”
Bell hesitates. “I don’t know. But based on financial records, he sent regular payments to Miss MacLaren and her mother.”
Callum flinches. Regular payments.
Keir had always been good at sending money in the right direction. It was easier than showing up. Easier than being seen.
Callum turns away, staring at the window where the fog presses against the glass. The land outside is gray and ancient and indifferent.
“A daughter,” Callum says again, like saying it might make it make sense.
Bell’s voice is gentle. “She’ll be here soon.”
Callum closes his eyes.
He can handle grief. He can handle loss. He can handle rage.
But this, this feels like the start of something else entirely.
Keir is gone, and with him the one person who held Callum’s world together.
Now the castle waits, cold and watchful. And even that could be taken from him.
And somewhere across an ocean, a woman who shares Keir’s blood is coming here, into Callum’s home, into Callum’s life, carrying a claim Callum never saw coming.
Callum opens his eyes, jaw clenched.
He isn’t just grieving.
He’s bracing for war.
And the worst part is, he doesn’t even know who the enemy is yet.
“I’m not giving up the castle. It’s mine.”