Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Isobel
The Iceland house is too quiet.
My greatest fear…
Not Mack standing outside my room like a tattooed wall with a heartbeat. Not Lucian’s refusal to look at me unless I say something to make him. Which always makes her hate me more.
Not Erin’s blue eyes, which watch me watching everyone. Then, watch Lucian like a guard dog.
The quiet. Carlos kept my rooms as silent as he kept me. Soundproof.
I didn’t realize it at first.
It took a few days. Then, at dinner one night, I heard it. Silverware clinking on plates. Footsteps. Men laughing. Phones ringing. Music from another room. Voices through walls, through doors.
Talking.
He understood silence too well to waste it. Silence isolates a woman. Makes her take whatever conversation is offered to her.
My suite faces the sea. I stand here now, a bay of windows overlooking the black shore, the dark waters. I tighten the blanket around my shoulders and watch waves shatter themselves against rocks below.
Everything here is beautiful in a way that feels breakable. Like the glass walls that shield them.
I’m always cold here.
There’s a fire lit. I heard her tell them to light it. There is a bathroom with black stone and brass fixtures. Someone put folded clothes in the drawers before I arrived. Sweaters. Socks. Soft things.
Expensive things. Not my things. Nothing has been mine in years. I wore what Carlos liked on me.
I’m dressed like a doll. Even here.
I am surrounded by armed men who hate Carlos more than I do. The house is secure. Rafe has checked my clothes, my shoes, my bag, the lining of my coat, and the clasp of the necklace I was not allowed to keep once they found it carried a transmitter.
One I had no idea was there.
I’d been wearing it.
For years.
A tracker.
Like a pet.
I doubt they believe me.
A knock sounds at the door.
I don’t turn.
Men never wait for permission.
“Rafe wants you downstairs,” he says. His voice is low. Rough. Practical.
I turn to face him. “For what?”
“Questions.”
“I have answered questions.”
“More questions.”
I laugh once. Dry.
“Does Lucian know?”
Mack’s expression does not change. “Lucian knows everything that happens in this house.”
No. He doesn’t. But I don’t say that.
I fold the blanket and place it on the chair because I’ve always been neat.
Mack waits in the hall. He doesn’t touch me. No one does.
We walk through the east wing in silence. Two of Lucian’s men fall in behind us, far enough not to crowd, close enough to remind me this is not freedom.
It makes me tired.
The main level glows with warmth. Voices drift from the family wing. Cass, bright and sharp, says something about soup. A child laughing.
The boy’s laughter makes my chest hurt. An echo of something I thought I’d have.
Lucian and Erin aren’t here.
The house feels different when Lucian is absent. Men still move. Security still breathes. Fire still burns.
Like gravity has stepped away.
I breathe easier when he’s not here.
Blaze looks at me once, quickly, then away. Not because I interest him.
Because he despises me.
Gregory stands when I enter. Polite reflex. Lucian’s brother.
Softer around the edges, yes. But the same eyes if one knows where to look. Same bone-deep attention. Same habit of holding himself as if stillness is the last defense of the civilized.
“You don’t need to stand,” I say.
He blinks, then sits again. “Sorry. Reflex.”
Blaze looks offended. “I have manners.”
“You have good looks,” Rafe says. “Often mistaken for manners.”
Then Rafe turns the tablet toward me.
Marina’s old mark fills the screen. Not a signature exactly. She would never be so obvious. A small thing. A thin black line through a gold dot.
My throat closes. “Where did you get that?”
Rafe watches me carefully. “A dead courier account came alive.”
I step closer before I can stop myself. The screen shows a message.
MARINA HAS THE PROOF.
Below it, an image. I see the warehouse first. Then Carlos.
Then Lucian.
Younger. Dark-haired. Beautiful in the cruel way young men can be, that makes a girl do stupid things. Their men around them.
My stomach turns. I know this photograph. Not because I have seen this exact print.
Because I’m the one who took it.
Carlos standing two feet from Lucian with a smile that did not reach his eyes. Lucian unaware. The men already turning their bodies toward the stronger center of gravity. Yet they don’t even realize they’re doing it.
I grip the back of a chair.
Rafe notices. “Did Marina send this?”
I stare at the mark on the screen. Closely. There’s something different about the thin black line, the gold circle it runs through.
This one is perfect.
“No,” I say.
The room stills.
Rafe’s eyes sharpen. “No?”
“It’s not Marina.”
Blaze pushes off the wall. “Looks like her creepy little arts-and-crafts signature to me.”
“It is meant to,” I say. “Carlos is pretending to be her.”
Bayne’s expression does not change, but something predatory wakes in his eyes. “Carlos.”
Rafe looks at the tablet again. “Why?”
“Blaze is right,” I say. “Hers is arts and crafts. Hand-drawn.”
Rafe studies me. “You’re certain?”
I look at the mark again. “Yes.”
“Even if Carlos made it, could Marina be working with him right now?”
A laugh leaves me before I can stop it. “She always was.”
Blaze’s jaw tightens.
“This message isn’t from her,” I continue. “And if Carlos is using her mark, then…”
I stop. The room feels like it’s tilting. No one speaks. The fire pops softly. Far away, the child laughs again, and the sound nearly breaks me in half.
Marina is too clever to be dead. She arranged other people’s deaths.
The strategy-room door opens. Lucian enters first. Erin is beside him.
Of course she is.
Her hair is slightly mussed. Her mouth is a little swollen. His hand is at her back, and something ugly, old, and unwanted twists inside me.
Not jealousy exactly. Jealousy is too simple.
It’s grief.
Once, I stood beside him like that. Then Carlos told me I was standing beside a monster.
And I decided to believe him.
I look away.
“What happened?” Lucian asks.
Rafe answers him, but his eyes stay on me. “Message came through a courier account. Isobel says it is not Marina. It is Carlos imitating her.”
Lucian says, “Why imitate her when she’s always been his willing participant?”
“What message?” Erin asks.
Rafe shows them.
Lucian looks at the photograph. The change in him is immediate and almost invisible.
A tightening of the mouth. A slight pause in breathing. A shift of weight.
Does he remember me in a white dress, standing by that fountain? Laughing as I told them to get closer. Asking why men always stand so far apart in a photo.
The Lucian I knew would have resented being steadied where men could see.
“Where did he get this?” Lucian asks.
“Marina had copies,” I say. “Of everything.”
His gaze cuts to me. For one second, the room disappears. History. A hallway neither of us wants to walk down, but both of us know by fear.
Then Erin shifts beside him. The woman he chooses now. He grabs her hand, and she brings him back into himself.
She calms him.
I never did that.
“Marina kept everything,” I say. “Favors. Photographs. Names. Old access. She used to say memory was safest with proof.”
Blaze mutters, “Charming.”
Ignoring him, I tell the others. “This message is too clean.”
“A distraction,” Erin says quietly. “Only to make us think Marina is alive.”
I nod. “Yes.”
Her eyes stay on mine. Not soft. Not forgiving. But steady.
She is the solid thing in his world. I can see why.
“Why use Marina’s account?” she asks.
“He wants you to chase the wrong ghost,” I tell her.
Lucian steps closer to the table. “And the right one? Marina?”
My throat feels raw. “The right one is probably dead.”
The room goes silent. This time, even Blaze has nothing to say.
Erin looks at me, and something in her expression shifts.
Not pity. Thank God. I can’t tolerate pity from the girl Lucian bought.
Who now stands beside him and holds him together.
“Marina may be alive,” Rafe says.
“No,” I say with a quick certainty too bold for him to disagree with.
Everyone hears it.
I force my fingers to release the chair. “Carlos wouldn’t need to use her mark if she were alive.”
“He killed her,” Erin finishes.
The words land like stones. I feel like a wound feels the moment before it starts to bleed.
I hate being in this room and feeling like I’m about to break.
“She helped him,” Blaze says. “She helped Carlos. She helped with the old routes, the messages, the Village.”
“I know,” I say.
“She helped destroy people,” Blaze argues. “For him.”
“I know what she was,” I say. “I knew what she did. I know she wasn’t innocent. She’s still my cousin.”
My voice cracks. Damn it.
Then Erin says, “That part always hurts. Loving someone despite what they’ve done.”
My eyes burn.
Lucian’s voice comes next. Low. Controlled. “What did Marina keep? And could Carlos have killed her to gain it?”
I breathe in. I can do strategy.
I cannot do grief in front of Lucian Bachman and the woman who owns his heart.
But I can do strategy.
“Authorization records,” I say. “Old Bachman routes. Warehouse rosters. Payment chains. Who opened which door? Who delayed which alarm? Carlos’s early deals. Your men.”
Lucian goes still. Dangerously still.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I mean his men. Carlos’s. From before.”
His face becomes something terrible.
The men in his eyes, I killed.
I remember those men, the way they looked at Lucian. The way Carlos watched him, his eyes darker every day. Clouded with jealousy and fear that those men would one day follow Lucian.
I remember Carlos telling me, “Do you know what Lucian will do when he leaves us? When he takes our men with him?”
I remember being horrified at what he told me. Something so dark, so devious, I instantly saw Lucian in a different life.
“We have to stop him,” I said. “We have to talk to him.”
Carlos took my face in his hands and looked at me like I was something fragile and broken and he was going to fix me. “It’s gone beyond talk. There’s only one way to stop him, Belle.”
God help me, I believed him.
I was vulnerable then.
I wanted to believe so many things.
And an ugly little part of me wanted the more vicious man. The bad man who would kill for me. Kill to get me back.
Kill to keep me.
Keep me in beautiful places filled with beautiful things where I could be his beautiful queen and reign beside him.
Powerful. Chosen. Vicious.
I got exactly what I wanted.
Only I didn’t save anyone. I lost all my freedom. And I was no queen.
Dressed in all the finest things, surrounded by the beauty I craved, I was caged by my vanity.
Now, Lucian’s eyes cut to mine, stinging. I deserve that look. I deserve worse.
Erin’s hand tightens in his. To anchor him. And it works.
He releases the breath he’s held as captive as Carlos held me.
“What else?” Lucian asks. For a moment, we hold one another’s eyes as if an old secret passes between us, like he’s ensuring with this steady gaze that I don’t tell.
I could lie.
Old instinct rises immediately. Smooth. Familiar. Survival dressed as caution.
I could say I don’t know. I could say Marina never told me. I could say Carlos kept me too isolated to understand.
Some of that would even be true.
But truth mixed with omission is my old language. And I am so tired of speaking it. I inhale a shaky breath. “I know a few things that could be helpful…but first—”
Rafe’s tablet chimes again. Everyone turns. Another message appears beneath the photograph.
A message from Marina, it says.
Rafe doesn’t open it. He looks at Lucian. Lucian looks at me.
Before anyone says it, I know. Marina always loved an audience. Carlos loves one more.
“It’s not her. It’s him,” I say. “He thinks you’ll open it if it’s from her. Play it.”
Lucian’s eyes narrow. “Isobel—”
“Play it,” I repeat. “We have to. There’s no other choice.”
Lucian looks at Rafe. “Play it.”
Erin steps closer to the screen. Rafe taps the file. The screen goes black. Then light.
A timestamp appears.
From five days ago.
A room appears.
Concrete walls. A metal chair. A woman bound to it, head bowed, dark hair falling forward.
For a second, my mind refuses.
No.
No.
No.
Then the woman lifts her face.
Marina.
Older than the last time I saw her. Harder. Blood at the corner of her mouth. Still beautiful in that sharp, cruel way that made men think cutting themselves was worth her attention.
Carlos steps into the frame behind her.
He places one hand on her shoulder.
Marina does not flinch.
Prideful to the end.
Carlos says to the camera. “I have always found secrets tedious. They make people careless.”
My hand goes to my mouth. No one moves. Marina’s eyes lift to the camera.
For one second, I think she sees me. Impossible.
But it feels that way.
Then she says, “He will know.”
Carlos’s smile changes. “I’m counting on it.”
Rafe kills the video before the end.
The room is silent. Marina is dead.
Carlos killed her before he even sent me to Red Shutters. She may have even been held in the same house where I was, preparing for my mission.
The room tilts. I grab the chair too late. My knees go.
Mack catches me before I hit the floor. I want to tell him not to touch me. I don’t.
Because if he lets go, I may fall all the way through myself.
Erin comes closer. Lucian stands behind her, frozen in that terrible way of his.
She looks at me, and I hate that she is the one who sees me instead of him.
“I loved her,” I whisper. “Then, I feared her. She was family.”
Erin’s eyes soften. “Those can all be true.”
Something breaks in me. A choked sob escapes my throat. I put my hand over my mouth and turn my face away because the grief is humiliating.
Rafe’s voice comes from somewhere above me.
“Carlos has Marina’s files.”
Gregory whispers, “The warehouse. The Village. They do connect. Significantly.”
The words move through the room like smoke.
The first fire. The men who died. The gates that opened. The second fire. His men gone. The Village gone.
Carlos was behind it all.
Finally, Lucian looks at me. His voice is cold enough to stop my breath. “You will tell us every secret she kept.”
I nod.
Then he says, “And every lie you ever told.”
He doesn’t want our shared secrets spilled out on this table.
Only ones he doesn’t already know.
I swallow back our shared history. “Yes.”
Erin’s gaze stays on me. Steady. Unforgiving.
But Marina is dead.
Carlos is coming for all of us.
And this time, when the fire reaches for Lucian Bachman, it will find him no longer standing alone.