THREE
AMELIE
He was the one to watch out for: Kieran Rook. His expression when he first saw me suggested he was already plotting my demise.
When Vanessa brought up her family in the car, that name gave me goosebumps.
I couldn’t understand why; it’s not like I had ever heard of him before.
It was as if my sixth sense had identified a potential threat, even before my brain registered it.
My reaction had given me food for thought: just because Mr Rook had humoured his wife’s charity didn't mean the rest of his brood would.
After my brain fart—Adam’s charming words, not mine—I tuned back into what my aunt was describing.
She told me that Kieran and Jessica were twins and that they were both eighteen.
There was a twenty-one-year-old sibling called Lincoln, who was hardly ever home, apparently.
Vanessa then revealed, with a fond smile, that she and Cameron had a child together: Maisy, who was almost four.
That meant Maisy and I were connected by blood, and I wondered what that made us.
Cousins? After hearing that there were four others, I realised why they needed such a massive, fancy house.
My first glimpse of the Rook family estate had been overwhelming.
As those motorised gates slowly slid open, the main house was revealed, brick by brick, the stonework glowing under the landscape lighting.
It was an imposing building with small square window panes, Georgian, I think, and half of it was covered with English ivy.
Ironic, considering the beautiful vine with heart-shaped leaves was categorised as a weed: another contradiction in terms.
Double garages sat to one side of a yard that boasted a variety of vibrant-looking trees, but not a cherry blossom in sight, thank goodness.
I ignored the expensive-looking cars parked in a perfect line in front of the garage doors: the paintwork was so shiny, you could probably see your face in it. As I said, fancy.
And that was the keyword right there. Fancy.
It was an illusion: high ceilings, chandeliers, mirrors everywhere, and artwork decorating the walls: exuberant luxury at its finest. I had spent most of my life living in squalor, and I was comfortable with that.
Squalor didn’t lie to you; what you saw is what you got.
There, in the Rook’s palace, everything looked too perfect; almost like it had been strategically put in place to hide something darker.
If those walls could talk, I wondered what they would say.
It was still the most beautiful house I had ever seen, even more so than the homes of the women on the Real Housewives, a show I’d seen a handful of times on Dad’s tablet.
As I’d reluctantly followed Cameron and Vanessa through the main doors and into a grand hallway, my stomach sank when I saw how shabby my trainers looked against that polished marble flooring.
Then I had looked up.
And there he was, standing at the top of the grand, sweeping staircase like a terrifying apparition of maleness, claiming the space.
The stairs branched out at the top into a balcony where Kieran Rook’s large hands rested on the handrail.
I could see his legs through the gaps in the metal slats of the railings.
He was barefoot and dressed in faded denim jeans that hugged his strong-looking thighs and a grey vest top.
The muscles of his tattooed arms bulged as he stared down his perfect nose at me with those devilish eyes.
Even from my lower position, I could see how tall and broad he was.
Kieran looked way too masculine and ripped to be eighteen.
If we were dealing with a game of chess, he’d match his namesake, a rook who could crush anything in its path.
Telling myself not to shy away, I’d handed my hoodie to Cameron with a note of thanks as Vanessa started to say how happy she was that I was there, for the zillionth time.
Kieran must have caught my expression before I’d lifted my eyes from my tatty trainers, as his focus had slowly slid from my feet to my face.
Those eyes had said the same thing as my footwear.
You don’t belong here. That message had been written across his moody face, loud and clear.
And what a face it was. The man-child was breathtakingly handsome, even more so than the influencer boys I followed on YouTube.
His dark hair was mussed, the locks sticking out in all the right directions, and he had headphones hooked around his neck. I wondered what type of music he listened to.
From that distance, I couldn’t see what colour his eyes were—brown or green, maybe. Kieran’s face was a chiselled work of perfection; he had it all: tanned skin, a square jaw, a sharp, straight nose, and sinful-looking lips. The smirk he wore had forced a strange sensation to flutter in my tummy.
He was like the beast of the threshold in human form.
I recalled that moment and how the girl I knew to be his twin sister appeared behind him. My focus instantly shifted to the little girl she held in her arms, and a pain struck a chord in my chest.
Sophie.
The need to see my sister charged through me as I watched the pair bound down the stairs.
And then it was like I was under attack, as Jessica, who introduced herself as Jessa, lowered her half-sister to the floor.
I had stepped back, and the tiny bundle launched herself at my legs, squeezing me tightly before springing back.
Maisy was a giddy, whirling thing, chuntering something about Disney princesses.
I ruffled her hair and then bent down to ask her who her favourite was, to which she replied, ‘Elsa’.
It was the same as Sophie’s. The irony wasn’t lost on me for a second.
Without breaking that calm facade I’d put in place, I swallowed down that wave of misery before it bled out on their perfect, polished flooring.
After that brief moment of banter, Cameron and his son continued to glare at each other until I was ushered toward the kitchen.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about the atmosphere between Mr Rook and his son: disappointed, maybe? If you couldn’t live as a happy family when you literally had it all, what chance did the rest of us have?
And I knew at that moment that Kieran Rook would be a problem.
And why? Because that is what I was. A variable that didn’t belong on his board, a problem he had attempted to understand in those few minutes he had stood there staring at me.
I just hoped he didn’t put too much effort into trying to solve me.
If I got my way, I was there until Adam called, and then I was gone.
Over the following thirty minutes, I was taken on a tour of the house and grounds.
I took little in, apart from the swimming pool, which looked so inviting.
I couldn’t swim; I’d always wanted to learn, but of course, that would have been impossible with my last living situation.
This one, however, was an eye-opener. Every room we walked through oozed wealth and had that “do not touch” vibe.
There were two living spaces on the ground floor, the kitchen and a study that Mr Rook used. The next room down from that was a gaming room of sorts. It had an engraved sign on the door, The Den, and was definitely a boys' space.
All rooms were decorated to a high standard; the TVs on the walls and the fireplaces were huge and daunting.
The sofas were all leather, and the flooring was real hardwood, each surface carrying no marks or scuffs, only my shadow, which looked like a stain against the polished surface.
In the basement, there was a cinema room on one side and a gym on the other, again with entertainment. Why on earth did they need so many TVs?
On the second floor, there were several bedrooms and a main bathroom.
Vanessa explained that three of the bedrooms had en-suites, but unfortunately, mine wasn’t one of them.
As if I would miss it, having access to any bathroom was a luxury for me.
The entire top floor was taken up with Vanessa and Cameron’s room.
She then explained that the pool house also had a games room.
The whole experience was unnerving, to say the least.
Jessa had joined us for the part when I was shown the room I would be using.
It was a medium-sized space and decorated in purple and grey.
The carpet felt so thick beneath my sock-covered feet, like walking through a cloud.
The bed was also a double, so much bigger than the sagging bunkbed I had shared with Sophie.
I also had a dressing table and a large wardrobe full of clothes.
The window looked out onto what I assumed would be the side of the house.
The view through the trees in the distance was of another property.
I wondered what their neighbours were like.
“I’ve stocked you up with some of Jessa’s old stuff until we can take you shopping,” Vanessa said with a kind smile. A girl could get used to an expression like that. Not this one, though. If I dropped my guard, I was easier to attack.
Her stepdaughter, Jessa, had then started dragging outfits out and placing them against my body, sizing me up.
She studied me like I was her new project.
Jessa was extremely vocal, talking about fashion, my sizes, favourite colour and asking me what music I liked and which TV shows I binged.
As you can imagine, my answers were limited.
It didn’t take a genius to realise that the Rook children had not been told where I had come from. I took some relief from that. I didn’t want to be pitied; I just wanted to be seen as a normal seventeen-year-old girl.