Chapter Three
THE SUMMONS COMES AT nine.
A sharp knock—the first knock I've heard in this house, actually, which makes me wonder if the staff are held to different standards than their employer—and then a woman's voice, quiet but firm.
"The king requests your presence in his study."
The tone speaks louder than words in this case.
She says it’s a request, but we both know I’m not really being offered a choice.
I glance down at my clothes. Same jeans and blouse I was wearing when I walked into Hewhay's a lifetime ago, but they're wrinkled now, slept-in looking even though I didn't sleep in them. I smell like stress and stale fear and the faint ghost of that bookshop tea.
Not exactly how I'd choose to face an interrogation, but captives can’t be choosers, right?.
"Coming," I say.
The woman who leads me through the house is middle-aged, efficient, her dark hair pulled back in a severe bun. She doesn't make conversation. Doesn't look at me except to ensure I'm following. I'm a task to be completed, nothing more.
We go down the main staircase, through a hallway I didn't see yesterday, and stop in front of a pair of heavy wooden doors. The woman knocks once, waits for a response I don't hear, and then opens the door and steps aside.
"Miss Sutton," she announces.
I step into my captor’s study, which is unsurprisingly.
..immaculate, and the photographer in me appreciates it.
The composition and the lines. The way light falls through tall windows onto dark wood and leather.
Built-in bookshelves line two walls, filled with volumes arranged by height and color.
A massive desk dominates the center of the room, its surface empty except for a single pen, a single notepad, and a laptop closed with geometric precision.
No clutter. No warmth. No photographs, no mementos, no evidence that a human being actually works here rather than a very organized machine.
This room reveals him, I realize. The rest of the estate is impressive but impersonal—the kind of grandeur that comes with old money, maintained by staff, existing independent of whoever happens to live there.
But this space? This is his. Every inch of it designed for control, for order, for the absolute elimination of chaos.
And behind the desk, not rising as I enter, is the man himself.
Devyn is in a charcoal suit today, perfectly tailored, the kind that probably costs more than six months of my rent.
He's holding a pen, tapping it against the desk in a quick, restless rhythm.
Tap tap tap. Even seated, even still, there's an energy to him.
An impatience that seems to hum just beneath the surface.
The door closes behind me.
He doesn't offer me a seat. Doesn't greet me. Just looks at me with those golden eyes, and I feel it in my chest. A tightening. An awareness that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with something I don't want to name.
Not now, Bailey. Not ever. Focus.
"Tell me who sent you."
No preamble. No pleasantries. Just the accusation, sharp and direct.
"No one sent me." My voice comes out steadier than I expected. Small miracle, given that my heart is trying to beat its way out of my chest.
“Then explain how you ended up in my chapel.”
I shouldn’t tell him the truth. I should make something up. Something plausible enough for him to consider letting me go. That’s the smartest and safest thing to do—
“I fell asleep in a bookshop,” I blurt out, “and woke up watching your bride run away."
—but my mouth gets me in trouble before my brain can take control.
Bailey, you idiot.
“A bookshop.”
One second there's that restless energy, that constant motion, and the next—
Stillness.
"Hewhay's," I find myself elaborating even though I feel I’m just digging a deeper hole for myself by doing so. "I don't know if you've heard of it—"
“Go on.”
Those two words...nearly knock me off my feet because it speaks volumes. Him asking me to continue instead of telling me I’ve lost my mind?
“Have you been there?” I blurt out. “Is that why—”
He looks at me, asking with remarkable politeness—
“Why do you think you have any right to ask questions?”
Fair point.
And so...I do as he asks and pick up where I left off.
I tell him about the bookshop that appeared out of nowhere. The tea that tasted like comfort and made me feel safe when I shouldn't have. The book—the impossible book with my name in it, my face in the illustrations, my life described in ink that looked centuries old.
He starts drumming his fingers on his desk when I tell him about the four routes, the four kings. About choosing Quinn and Skye and Wolfe.
“But you did not pick my route?”
Wow.
Either he knows something about Hewhay’s...or he’s just really good at playing along, with the way he asks me about his “route” so easily. And while my brain is now sufficiently in control, urging me this time to play it safe and lie—
“You seemed too intense for someone like me.”
I end up stammering the truth out.
Again.
“Is that so?”
“You w-were described as someone with a legendary temper, and I—”
“So I scared you away.”
“No, it’s not—” I feel like I should apologize. I’m really tempted to apologize. I have a feeling I’ve offended him for not choosing his route. “It’s just—”
“Never mind. Proceed with your story.”
“Uh...right.” I’m dying to apologize, but I have a feeling saying ‘I’m sorry’ is just going to make him hate me even more.
“Well?”
The rest of my words tumble out in a rush at the impatient note in his voice. I tell him about falling asleep in the velvet armchair. About waking up in his chapel. About the woman in black who grabbed me, begged me not to tell, and disappeared through a door that shouldn't exist.
When I finish, silence fills the room.
Devyn hasn't moved. Hasn't blinked, as far as I can tell. He's just watching me with those golden eyes, and I'm acutely aware of how ridiculous this all sounds. A magical bookshop. A book with my name in it. A portal to another world.
If I were him, I wouldn't believe me either.
My stomach chooses this moment to growl.
Loudly.
Mortifyingly, undeniably loudly, like some kind of dying whale sound that echoes off the immaculate walls of his immaculate study.
Ugh.
My face goes hot. I can feel the blush spreading from my cheeks down my neck, and there's nowhere to hide, no way to pretend that didn't just happen.
"I—sorry. I didn't—I haven't eaten since—"
I don't actually know when I last ate. Yesterday? The day before? Time has gotten slippery.
"—and I don't know why my stomach decided now was the moment to announce itself, it has terrible timing, I'm so sorry—"
Stop talking, Bailey.
"—it's not like I was trying to be dramatic or anything, I'm just apparently a dying whale now—"
STOP. TALKING.
"—sorry. I'll stop."
I want to die.
But then I see something.
And suddenly, I want to live again.
Because his horribly handsome face...
I saw...something.
Not softness, exactly. Nothing about this man could be described as soft. But the hard line of his mouth changes, just fractionally. The corner of his lips twitches, and for a moment—just a moment—he looks almost...
Amused.
At me.
Because I'm ridiculous.
"You weren't brought breakfast," he says. It's not a question.
"I—no. I don't think so. Maybe? I wasn't really paying attention, I was—" Planning an escape from your heavily guarded mansion, "—no."
He picks up his phone, presses a button, and speaks in rapid French that's too fast for me to follow. The only word I catch is maintenant—now—delivered with the kind of impatience that suggests someone is about to have a very bad morning.
He sets the phone down. Looks at me again.
"You're either telling the truth," he says slowly, "or you're the most creative liar I've ever encountered."
"I'm not lying."
"Then you're a problem I don't know how to solve." He rises from behind the desk, and even though I knew he was tall, even though I was literally carried by this man yesterday, the full height of him still catches me off guard. "I dislike problems I can't solve."
He moves around the desk. Toward me.
My heart rate picks up. My breath catches. Every instinct tells me to step back, to put distance between us, but something keeps my feet rooted to the floor.
Pride, maybe.
Or something stupider.
He stops in front of me. Close. Too close. I can smell him again—that cedar and smoke scent that my brain has apparently decided to catalog against my will—and I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes.
This is fine. I'm fine. I can have a conversation with a terrifyingly attractive mafia king from three inches away without my brain short-circuiting.
Probably.
"In my world," he says, "mercy is seen as weakness. Unknown threats are eliminated. Quickly, efficiently, without hesitation." His voice is low, measured. "By rights, I should have you questioned by people far less patient than myself."
I should be terrified.
I am terrified.
So why is my stupid heart doing something that feels less like fear and more like—
No. Absolutely not. Do not finish that thought.
“But—”
He reaches out.
His fingers catch my chin, tilting my face up toward the light from the windows. It's the same gesture from yesterday—assessing, clinical—but this time his thumb brushes along my jaw, and the touch sends something warm and startling down my spine.
I stop breathing.
He turns my face slightly, like he's examining me. Looking for the lie. The light catches my cheekbone, my temple, and I realize with a jolt that this is exactly how I'd position a subject for a portrait. He's composing a shot. Reading me the way I read photographs.
His gaze drops to my mouth.
Third time.
I'm still counting.
Every time he does it, my pulse goes reckless and my brain forgets how to function. Every time his eyes come back up to mine, I have to remember how to breathe.
This time, when his gaze meets mine, there's something in it I can't name. Something that makes the air feel thick. Something that makes me very, very aware of how little space exists between us.
"You talked back to me," he says softly. "In my own chapel. Surrounded by my men. Either you're very brave or very stupid."
The defiance rises up before I can stop it. The same defiance that got me into this mess. The same defiance that keeps surprising me, like there's a version of myself I'm only now meeting.
"Maybe both."
Something happens to his face.
His mouth doesn't curve. Not quite. But something around his eyes changes—a slight crinkling at the corners, a barely-there shift that suggests the possibility of a smile without actually committing to one.
The almost-smile.
It's devastating.
The almost-smile is somehow worse than an actual smile would be. Because an actual smile I could dismiss. I could tell myself it's just a smile, people smile all the time, it doesn't mean anything.
But this—this almost—feels like something I earned. Something rare. Something he doesn't give to just anyone.
Oh no.
Oh no, Bailey. No.
He releases my chin. Steps back. And just like that, the almost-smile is gone, replaced by cool authority.
My jaw tingles where he touched it. I resist the urge to press my fingers there, to see if his touch left a mark. It didn't. Of course it didn't.
But it feels like it should have.
"Three days," he says. "Prove you're not my enemy, or I'll treat you as one."
Three days to prove I'm not a conspiracy. Three days to convince a mafia king that I'm just a photography assistant who got lost between worlds.
Three days until a wedding I never agreed to.
"And if I prove it?" I hear myself ask. "What then?"
His golden eyes hold mine. "Then we'll discuss what happens next."
It's not an answer. It's barely even a promise.
But it's more than I had five minutes ago.
"Okay," I say. "Three days."
A knock at the door keeps him from answering, and a woman carrying a tray enters the room. The smell of fresh bread and coffee hits me, and my stomach makes another undignified noise.
I close my eyes. "Please ignore that."
"I don't think I can," Devyn says. "It was quite emphatic."
My eyes fly open.
Was that—did he just—
His face gives nothing away. Absolutely nothing. But there's something in his eyes. The faintest glimmer of—
He's teasing me.
The mafia king is teasing me about my stomach growling.
I don't know what to do with that information.
"Eat," he says, gesturing to the tray the woman has set on a side table. "Then we'll begin."
"Begin what?"
"Your three days." He moves toward the door. "I'll have Mrs. Lyme bring you appropriate clothes. You'll join me for dinner tonight, and we'll see if you can convince the household you're not a threat."
"And if I can't?"
He pauses at the threshold. Looks back at me over his shoulder.
"Then dinner will be very awkward."
And he's gone.
I stand there, staring at the closed door, trying to process what just happened.
The mafia king made a joke.
Two jokes, actually.
His face didn't even change when he said them. Just that perfectly neutral expression, those golden eyes giving nothing away, and then—deadpan humor, delivered so dryly I almost missed it.
Then dinner will be very awkward.
I press my hands to my cheeks. They're warm. Too warm.
What is wrong with you, Bailey?
My stomach growls again, and I give up trying to understand my own reactions. Food first. Existential crisis about finding a fictional mafia king's dry humor attractive later.
The tray holds fresh bread, still warm. Butter. A pot of strawberry jam. Coffee, strong and dark. A small dish of mixed berries.
It's simple. It's perfect. And the first bite of bread, slathered with butter and jam, is so good I nearly cry.
I eat everything.
And while I eat, I think.
Three days. Three days to prove I'm not an enemy. Three days before a wedding that still looms over everything, even though neither of us has mentioned it directly.
I should start panicking by now.
But all I can think of is how he’s almost smiled.
Twice.
That barely-there crinkling at the corners of his eyes, that shift that suggests amusement without committing to it.
I'm keeping track of those too.
The eyes-to-mouth count. The almost-smiles. The way my heart beats differently when he's close.
I'm keeping track of all of it, and I don't know why.