Chapter 22 - Gabriel
Something is wrong.
I know it the moment I walk through the door. The house feels different—charged with a tension I can't identify but can definitely sense. It's in the quality of the silence, the way the staff's eyes slide away from mine, the subtle wrongness that prickles at the back of my neck.
"Where is she?" I ask the housekeeper.
"In her room, sir. She returned from the market about two hours ago. Said she needed to rest."
Her room. Not my room, where she's slept every night since she moved in. Her room—the guest suite I assigned her as a formality, a polite fiction that neither of us has bothered to maintain.
Until now.
I climb the stairs slowly, turning possibilities over in my mind. Maybe she's just tired. Maybe she needed space—even I can understand that living with someone like me might be overwhelming. Maybe it's nothing.
But I don't believe in nothing. I believe in patterns, in signals, in the small details that reveal what people are trying to hide.
And something has shifted.
I knock on her door. A pause, then: "Come in."
She's sitting on the edge of the bed, still dressed in the clothes she wore to the market.
Her face is pale, her eyes distant, her hands folded in her lap with unnatural stillness.
She looks up when I enter, and I see something flicker across her expression—guilt?
Fear? Something she smooths away before I can identify it.
"You're back early," she says.
"The meetings finished ahead of schedule." I lean against the doorframe, studying her. "Mrs. Bloom said you've been up here for hours. Are you feeling all right?"
"Just tired. The market was crowded."
"Did you find what you needed for the Harrison event?"
"Yes. Roses, lilies, the usual." She attempts a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "Georgios sends his regards. He asked where I've been."
"And what did you tell him?"
"That I have a demanding new client."
The words should be light, teasing. Instead, they fall flat, weighted with something unsaid. I watch her face, searching for cracks in the mask she's wearing.
"Poppy." I push off from the doorframe and move closer. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong."
"You're lying."
Her jaw tightens. "I'm tired, Gabriel. That's all. Is that not allowed?"
The edge in her voice is new. Sharp, defensive—the tone of someone protecting a secret. I've heard it a thousand times from business rivals, from Brotherhood members with something to hide, from men who underestimated how much I could see.
I never expected to hear it from her.
"Of course it's allowed," I say carefully. "I'm just concerned. You've seemed... off today."
"Off how?"
"Distracted. Distant." I stop in front of her, close enough to touch but not touching. "Like something happened that you're not telling me about."
For a moment, I think she's going to break. I see the hesitation in her eyes, the war between truth and concealment. Her lips part, and I wait for the confession I can feel hovering just beneath the surface.
Then she looks away.
"Nothing happened," she says. "I'm just tired. I think I need some time alone tonight, if that's okay."
It's not okay. Nothing about this is okay. But I can hear the finality in her voice, the door closing between us, and I know that pushing harder will only make it worse.
"Of course," I say. "Get some rest. I'll see you in the morning."
I leave her room and close the door behind me, my mind already racing through possibilities.
Something happened at the market. Something she doesn't want me to know about.
And I need to find out what.
***
Hutton's report comes within the hour.
I'm in my study, staring at documents I'm not reading, when my phone buzzes with his name. I answer before the first ring finishes.
"Tell me."
"Zachary Mercer was spotted near the flower market this morning, sir. Approximately two hours before your florist arrived."
My hand tightens on the phone. "Near the market, or in it?"
"In it. Our surveillance caught him entering the main building at 9:47 AM. He left at 11:23 AM—roughly fifteen minutes after Ms. Rivers completed her purchases."
Fifteen minutes. Long enough to approach her. Long enough to have a conversation. Long enough to plant whatever poison he's been preparing.
"Did they make contact?"
"We don't have visual confirmation of direct interaction. The market's interior cameras are limited, and our operative lost sight of him in the crowd." A pause. "But the timing strongly suggests they spoke."
Of course they spoke. That's why she's been hiding in her room for two hours. That's why she can't look me in the eye.
Zach got to her. And she didn't tell me.
"What else?"
"We're still working on the Linda Rivers investigation. The trail goes cold around the time of the name change—professionally cold, as you suspected. Someone with significant resources scrubbed her history."
"Brotherhood resources?"
"That's our working theory. I've reached out to some of the older members, the ones who were active twenty-five years ago. Most claim they don't remember anything, but one name keeps coming up in connection with records erasure during that period."
"Who?"
"Bryan Vanderwal."
The name hits me like a fist to the chest. Bryan Vanderwal—my father's closest friend, one of the most powerful Brotherhood members of his generation. The man I was planning to contact about Linda's past.
If Bryan was involved in erasing Linda's history, then whatever she was running from wasn't just personal. It was Brotherhood business. Family business.
And Zach knows something about it. That's why he's circling Poppy. That's why he's been digging into her mother's past. He's found a thread, and he's pulling it, trying to unravel something that's been buried for a quarter century.
"I need to speak with Bryan," I say. "Arrange a meeting. Tomorrow, if possible."
"Yes, sir. And the Mercer situation?"
"Keep monitoring. I want to know every move he makes. If he so much as looks in her direction again—"
"Understood, sir."
I end the call and sit in the silence of my study, rage and fear warring in my chest.
She didn't tell me. That's the part I can't get past. Whatever Zach said to her, whatever lies he fed her, she chose to keep it secret. She looked me in the eye and said nothing happened, and I could see the lie sitting on her tongue.
Why? What could Zach possibly have offered that would make her hide from me?
A way out.
The thought surfaces unbidden, and I shove it away. She doesn't want a way out. She chose to stay, to move in, to build a life here with me. She's not looking for escape routes—she's just tired, just overwhelmed, just adjusting to a situation that would test anyone's limits.
But the doubt lingers, poisonous and persistent.
What if I've been wrong about her? What if the connection I thought we had was just survival instinct, her body adapting to captivity the way all prey eventually adapts?
What if the moment someone offered her an alternative—a door that locks from the inside instead of the outside—she started calculating how to walk through it?
I pour myself a whiskey and stand at the window, watching the darkness gather over the grounds.
I could confront her. Demand to know what Zach said, what she's hiding, why she lied to my face.
I could show her the surveillance reports, the proof that I know exactly what happened at that market.
I could make her understand that there are no secrets between us—not because she chooses to share them, but because I see everything.
But that would reveal how thoroughly I've been watching her. Tracking her. Monitoring her every movement, even when she thinks she's alone.
She knows I had her followed before. She knows about the surveillance during our early days, the way I learned her routines and patterns. But she doesn't know the extent of it—the cameras, the operatives, the reports that land on my desk detailing every conversation she has with the staff.
If she knew, would she still trust me?
Does she trust me now?
I don't know. And that uncertainty is more unbearable than anything Zach could do.
I spend the next hour pacing my study, unable to settle, unable to focus on anything but her. The whiskey goes untouched—I need my mind sharp, need to think through every angle of this situation.
Zach is playing a long game. That much is clear. He didn't approach Poppy to scare her or threaten her—he approached her to plant seeds. To make her question her reality, her choices, and her trust in me.
And it's working. I can see it in the way she looked at me tonight. Something has cracked, some foundation of certainty that I thought we'd built together.
The question is: can I repair it before Zach widens the breach?
***
I find her in the kitchen around midnight.
I couldn't sleep—too many thoughts, too much rage with nowhere to go—so I wandered the house like a ghost, ending up in the east wing before I realized where I was going. The wing where Woolworth died. The wing that's been locked since the gala, preserved like a crime scene.
I stood outside those doors for a long time, thinking about the man I killed and the woman who watched me do it. Thinking about how much has changed since that night, and how much hasn't.
Then I heard movement downstairs and followed it to the kitchen.
She's standing at the counter in one of my shirts—just the shirt, her legs bare beneath the hem—eating crackers straight from the box. She doesn't hear me approach; she's too focused on the food, stuffing crackers into her mouth with a desperation that seems almost frantic.
"Hungry?"
She whirls around, crumbs scattering, her face flushing with embarrassment. "Gabriel. I didn't—I thought you were asleep."
"Couldn't sleep." I move closer, studying her in the dim light. "Neither could you, apparently."
"I woke up starving. I don't know why—I had dinner, but suddenly I just..." She gestures helplessly at the crackers. "I couldn't stop thinking about food."
I file this away with the other observations I've been making. The tiredness. The pallor. The way she refused coffee this morning, according to Mrs. Bloom. The mood swings, the distance, the strange hungers.
Something is different about her. Something beyond the secret she's keeping.
"Come to bed," I say.
"Gabriel—"
"Not for that." Though even as I say it, I want her. I always want her. "Just to sleep. I don't like waking up without you."
The confession slips out before I can stop it—more vulnerable than I intended, more honest than I usually allow myself to be. She looks at me with an expression I can't read, the cracker box still clutched in her hands.
"Okay," she says finally. "Let me just..."
She puts the crackers away, wipes her hands on a towel, follows me up the stairs. Her body is warm against mine as we settle into bed, her head on my chest, her breathing slowly evening out.
But she doesn't relax. Not fully. There's a tension in her muscles, a guardedness that wasn't there before.
What did he tell you? I want to ask. What lies has he poured into your ear? What secrets do you think he knows that I don't?
Instead, I hold her and stare at the ceiling, listening to the rhythm of her breath.
She's hiding something. I'm certain of it now. The question is whether to confront her directly or let it play out, give her enough rope to either hang herself or prove that I can trust her after all.
Neither option appeals to me. Both feel like losses waiting to happen.
But there's something else nagging at me too—something beyond the Zach situation, beyond the secrets and lies. Something physical that I can't quite identify.
The smell of her has changed. Subtle, barely noticeable, but there.
A sweetness beneath her usual scent, something richer and more complex.
And her body—I've memorized every inch of her by now, and something is different.
Her breasts seem fuller, more sensitive when I touch them.
Her waist has a softness it didn't have before.
I'm probably imagining it. Projecting my anxiety onto her physical form, seeing changes that aren't there.
But the observations lodge in my mind anyway, waiting to be understood.
She shifts in my arms, murmuring something I can't make out, and I tighten my grip on her instinctively.
Mine, I think. Whatever happens, whatever secrets you're keeping, you're still mine.
But even as I think it, I know that possession isn't the same as trust. And trust, once broken, is almost impossible to rebuild.
I don't know what Zach told her. I don't know what she's planning. I don't know if the woman in my arms is still the woman I thought I knew, or if she's already begun the slow process of turning against me.
But I know one thing with absolute certainty: I'm not going to lose her.
Not to Zach. Not to the Brotherhood. Not to whatever secrets are buried in her mother's past.
She's mine.
And I protect what's mine.
No matter what it costs.
Sleep finally claims me sometime after two, my arms still wrapped around her, my mind still churning through possibilities and threats.
The last thing I'm aware of before consciousness fades is the warmth of her body against mine, the steady rhythm of her heartbeat, the faint new sweetness of her scent that I can't explain.
Something is changing.
I just don't know what yet.