Chapter 2
Peyton
Blake Delano drives like a man being chased by ghosts.
His car, a black Audi that's seen better years but purrs like it's been maintained with religious devotion, cuts through Wintervale's snow-covered streets with precision that borders on aggressive.
No wasted movement. No hesitation at intersections.
He knows this town the way predators know hunting grounds.
I watch him from the passenger seat, cataloging details the way I've been trained since childhood. There’s an unmistakable strength and swagger that he exudes just by breathing that I wonder if he realizes is there.
Strong hands on the wheel, no wedding ring, no nervous tells.
A small scar above his left eyebrow that's old enough to have faded but deep enough to have hurt.
The way his jaw tightens when we pass Wintervale landmarks like the shuttered factory on Ashwood, the anonymous office building on Fifth that houses God-knows-what, says a lot.
He's running from something. Or toward it.
Maybe both.
"You're staring," he says without looking at me.
"You broke a man's wrist on a terrace and told me my life is currency in a game I didn't know I was playing. I'm trying to decide if you're my best option or my worst mistake."
"Fair." He takes a corner too fast, correcting with the kind of muscle memory that says he's done this route a thousand times in worse conditions. "For what it's worth, I'm probably both."
"That's not comforting."
"It's honest."
I lean back against leather that's worn soft in places where other bodies have sat, other women like me, I bet.
The heating vents blast warm air that smells faintly of coffee and something sharper—gun oil, maybe, or the particular metallic scent that clings to men who've spent time in places where violence is casual.
My phone buzzes in my clutch. I ignore it.
It buzzes again. Then again.
"Your father?" Blake asks.
"Or someone pretending to care on his behalf." I silence it without checking. "He stopped calling me directly two years ago. Now he has staffers do it. More efficient that way."
"You don't sound hurt by it.”
"I stopped being hurt by my father when I was twelve and realized his campaign slogan got more emotional investment than I did. It’s just how things are.”
Blake's mouth twitches—not quite a smile, but close. "Relatable."
"Your father was a politician, too?”
"Worse. A Delano." He slows as we approach Kingsley Square, the massive Christmas tree lit up like a beacon in the center of town.
Even at this hour, the square is alive—couples ice skating, late-night shoppers emerging from Wreath & Whimsy with bags full of things they don't need, and tourists taking photos that’ll linger online until next year this time.
Normal people doing normal things in a town that's anything but.
"We're not going to your sister's house, are we?” I ask. It's a rhetorical question.
"No."
"Because it's being watched?”
"Because everything in Wintervale is being watched." He pulls into a side street, parks behind a building I don't recognize. It has a brick facade, minimal signage, the kind of place you'd walk past without noticing unless you knew to look. "Talia's meeting us here. Neutral ground."
"Neutral?" I raise an eyebrow. "In this town?"
"Neutral-adjacent. The owner owes me a favor that predates Silas's current plans. We have thirty minutes before someone notices the gap in surveillance."
“Why do you call him Silas? Isn’t he your uncle?”
“Just because someone is family doesn’t mean they deserve your respect.”
Facts.
He kills the engine. Silence rushes in, broken only by the tick of cooling metal and distant Christmas music bleeding through brick walls.
I should be terrified of what I learned tonight. I should be calling my father's security team, filing police reports, doing any of the rational things a senator's daughter does when strange men with violent resumes extract her from galas and tell her she's worth killing.
Instead, I'm calculating.
Blake said leverage. He said someone wants me alive or signed. He said there's a difference between his family's branches, between orders and protection, between playing the game and changing it.
He also didn’t flinch when I inferred that my mother's death wasn't an accident. In my soul, I’ve known that truth for three years.
Known it in the way you know things you can't prove, the timing too convenient, the investigation too brief, the insurance payout too clean.
They ruled it a mechanical failure and closed the case before anyone could hire investigators who might ask inconvenient questions.
My father remarried months later. She’s a political strategist with the right connections and no emotional baggage.
They honeymoon every anniversary in places that photograph well.
My father has always been a complete narcissist, but I will never understand how he can continue to live his life as if my mother’s never mattered.
I kept my mother's journals, her notes, containing some general genealogy research she'd been obsessing over in the months before she died. At first, I thought it was a hobby to keep her mind off of…well, life. But now I’m sure my mother had been searching for something.
And I think she found it.
Then she died.
"You said someone wants me for leverage," I say, turning to face Blake fully, taken aback by the length of this man’s eyelashes, which pop against his angular facial features. Sheesh, he’s hot.
"Leverage implies I have value beyond being the senator's daughter.
What am I worth, specifically? What did they think I could be used for? "
Blake meets my gaze, and I see the calculation happening behind his eyes on how much to tell, how much to hold back, whether I can handle the truth, or if I'll shatter like the good little political prop I've been raised to be.
I lift my chin. "I'm not fragile, Blake.
And I'm not stupid. My mother died researching something she wouldn't tell me about.
My father's been receiving threats he thinks I don't know about.
And now your family—sorry, one branch of your family—just tried to kidnap me at a Christmas gala.
So either tell me what I'm in the middle of, or let me out of this car so I can figure it out myself. "
"You'd walk away?” He says it like he's testing the theory.
"I've been planning my exit strategy since I was fifteen. I have three passports, two bank accounts my father doesn't know about, and a go-bag in a locker at Penn Station. So yes, Blake. I'd walk away. The question is whether you'd let me."
Something shifts in his expression like respect, maybe, or recognition. The look of someone who's met a fellow survivor and knows better than to underestimate them.
“You're a Kingsley by blood," he says quietly. "Your mother was not Lila Morrison but Lila Kingsley. Disowned granddaughter of Edmund Kingsley. There's a clause in the family trust which has been sealed, dormant, and forgotten by almost everyone except the people who profit from keeping it buried."
My stomach drops. Not from surprise but confirmation.
“You could have led with that,” I say.
“Where would the fun be in that?” he smirks, and it’s the first time I’ve felt levity from him tonight, but nothing about this shit is funny.
“What kind of clause?"
"The kind that activates when a verified descendant appears during Christmas week. Proxy votes. Board seats. Control over assets worth more than most countries' GDP." He pauses. "You're the heir they've been trying to erase."
The words land like stones in dark water—heavy, sinking, pulling everything down with them.
I’m a Kingsley?
Now it all makes sense. My mother spent her last months chasing proof of a bloodline she'd been denied her whole life. Proof that meant power. Meant inheritance. A new reality that would shake her life to the core. Our lives.
“How did this happen?”
“You want more?”
“I want everything.”
“From what I know, your maternal grandmother was Catherine Kingsley. She was disowned by her parents because she married a civil rights activist, which, you can imagine, was a big no-no in 1960s Wintervale. She took her married name, Morrison, which became your mother’s name and then yours.
I guess the Kingsley name became a distant and never discussed subject, which is why your mother probably never knew. ”
So they cast out my grandmother for marrying wrong, loving wrong, choosing her own life over their legacy. And when my mother found out, they killed her for it? My poor Mama.
"They murdered my mother." My voice comes out steady despite the rage burning through my chest. "Because she was going to claim what was hers."
"Probably." Blake doesn't soften it. Doesn't apologize for the brutality of the truth.
"And now you're the loose end. If you die, the clause never triggers.
But if you sign over power of attorney to the right people, they control your votes without the mess of making you disappear. Either way, you're currency."
"And your uncle? Silas? What does he want?"
"To keep you alive and unsigned long enough to prevent his rivals from consolidating Kingsley control. He needs you breathing, but not powerful. Useful but not dangerous."
“So a pawn.”
Blake's jaw tightens. "He sent me because I'm good at keeping people alive who everyone else wants dead. And because he thinks I owe him."
"Do you?"
"No." The word is flat, final. "I burned that debt six years ago. Along with everything else."
My phone buzzes again. This time I check it.
Unknown Number: Your father's worried. Come back to the gala. We can talk about this reasonably.
Unknown Number: Running makes it worse, Peyton. You know that.
Unknown Number: Blake Delano is not your friend. He's a weapon. And weapons don't choose their targets.
I show him the screen.
Blake reads the messages, expression darkening. "Domenic. He's persistent."