Chapter Twenty
Chapter Nineteen
Leona
I should have said no.
The thought comes quietly, settling somewhere beneath everything else, not fear exactly but something closer to instinct, the kind that tells me when to step back, when to leave things alone, when not to dig into something that will only make the ground worse once it opens.
But I already asked. Willem already agreed.
And something in me is too tired now to pretend I still want comfort more than truth.
So I don’t take it back.
I shift my weight slightly, one hand still wrapped around the mug, grounding myself in what little warmth it has left.
The coffee has gone lukewarm, but I didn’t notice when.
My focus stays on Willem now, on the way he watches me without pressing, without rushing, like he’s waiting to see whether I’ll hold steady long enough to actually hear what he has to say.
He isn’t like Marius. That doesn’t make him harmless. It makes him harder to read.
“I’m listening,” I say.
My voice comes out even. Not forced. Not quite as steady as I’d like, but not breaking either.
Willem studies me for another second, then nods once.
“The men who took you weren’t random,” he says. “You’ve already figured that out.”
I don’t answer. I only hold his gaze. The kitchen feels too bright all at once, morning light laid across the counters and floorboards and the careful order of the room, as though truth should arrive in places like this in some neat enough shape to survive hearing. I already know better than that.
“They weren’t after you,” he continues. “Not specifically. You were… proximity.”
The word lands wrong. My grip tightens slightly around the mug.
“Proximity.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a nicer way of saying expendable.”
Willem doesn’t correct me. That tells me enough.
I exhale slowly, my gaze dropping for a second before lifting again. My fingers stay tight around the mug, not because I need the warmth now but because it gives me something to hold that isn’t myself.
“Then what were they after?”
Willem shifts slightly against the counter, not closing the distance.
“They were testing a response.”
“Whose?”
His eyes don’t leave mine.
“Marius’s.”
The answer doesn’t make sense at first. Not fully.
It slides into place too slowly to reject and too quickly to ignore.
I frown, trying to fit it against what I already know, but the shape of it still won’t settle.
A response means intent. Planning. It means I didn’t simply cross the wrong people by accident. It means someone chose the form of it.
“Why would they need me for that?” I ask. “They don’t even know me.”
“They don’t need to,” Willem says. “They only need to know what he pays attention to.”
I go still.
Something in my chest tightens, not sharp, not immediate, but building. It isn’t the words alone. It’s the certainty in them. Willem doesn’t sound like a man guessing. He sounds like someone laying down structure and letting me decide whether I’m strong enough to stand inside it.
“That doesn’t explain why me,” I say.
Willem doesn’t answer right away. That hesitation tells me there’s more. My fingers tighten around the mug again.
“You’re leaving something out.”
“Yes.”
My eyes narrow.
“Then don’t.”
Another pause follows, long enough that I hear the house around us again. Some small sound from deeper in the corridor. The quiet hum of the refrigerator. My own breathing.
Then—
“He went to your farm,” Willem says.
The words land simply. But they don’t stay that way.
I stare at him.
“What?”
“He doesn’t do that,” Willem continues. “Not personally. Not unless something matters.”
The room shifts. I feel it, not outside of me but inside, like something has just slid into place that I didn’t realize was missing.
The memory comes back sharp now. His vehicle in the drive.
The way he walked toward me like he already owned the shape of the moment.
The way the air itself changed when he stepped onto my land.
I felt it then and hated it then, but now that memory takes on a different weight.
It is no longer only about him. It is about who else might have been watching.
“Marius went to my farm,” I say slowly. “He asked about the shipment, and then they showed up.”
Willem doesn’t interrupt. My jaw tightens.
“This is because of him.”
The words don’t feel like an accusation. They feel like fact.
Willem holds my gaze.
“They didn’t care about you,” he says. “Until he did.”
I keep looking at him, waiting, because I can tell there’s still more under it. He sees that too.
“The kind of work he controls,” he says after a moment, “depends on control. Routes. Land. Access. Timing. Things moving exactly where they’re supposed to, when they’re supposed to, under the right eyes.
When someone like Marius steps onto a piece of land himself, people notice.
They notice because men like him aren’t supposed to need to. ”
My stomach drops. Not just money, then. Not just influence. Not just men and a house and vehicles and that awful sense that everyone around him already knows where to stand. Something older. Built. Structured. Something that runs on roads and timing and people the way a body runs on blood.
“You say that like it’s normal,” I say.
Willem’s expression barely shifts.
“In this house, it is.”
That lands harder than I want it to. I stare down at the coffee for a second, at my own fingers wrapped around the mug too tightly, and try to fit that into the man who came to my farm and then stood in my yard like he had every right to rearrange what happened there.
“You mean this started with his family,” I say quietly. “Not just him.”
Willem doesn’t rush the answer.
“It started before him,” he says. “He’s just the one still holding it.”
The words settle in slowly. Not a family around him, then. Not brothers or fathers or uncles moving through the same halls. Something inherited. Something old enough to outlive the people who made it. Something that now sits entirely in his hands.
“So this didn’t start with me,” I say.
“No.”
“But it became about me.”
“Yes.”
The simplicity of it makes it worse.
I let out a breath that scrapes on the way out.
“So I was just there,” I say. “At the wrong time.”
Willem’s expression doesn’t shift.
“At the right time,” he says. “For them.”
I let out a short, humorless breath. “That’s comforting.”
Silence follows. Not empty. Just heavy.
I stare at the counter for a moment, my thoughts moving faster now, connecting things I haven’t had space to connect before.
The attack. The shipment. His visit. The way every explanation keeps folding back toward him no matter where I start.
The way this house seems built not simply to hold people, but to absorb them into rules I don’t know.
“Marius went there,” I say suddenly, lifting my gaze again. “He asked about the shipment. And then they showed up.”
Willem doesn’t interrupt. My jaw tightens.
“This is because of him.”
The words don’t feel like an accusation. They feel like fact.
Willem holds my gaze.
“They didn’t care about you,” he says. “Until he did.”
My attention shifts toward the hallway before I fully understand why. I didn’t hear him move. Didn’t notice him enter.
But he’s there.
Marius stands just beyond the doorway, not fully in the room, not hidden either, close enough that he heard it.
All of it. His posture is still, one hand resting lightly against the doorframe, but something in him has tightened further.
Not movement. Not reaction in any obvious sense.
Something denser than that. His jaw has set slightly.
His expression has stripped itself down to almost nothing.
There is no interruption. No attempt to take the conversation back.
That makes his presence heavier, not lighter. Like he has already run through the outcome of this in his head and found fault with every version of it.
I look back to Willem first, because he’s the one who started this and the one still standing in the truth of it with me.
“So what happens now?” I ask.
“They adjust,” Willem says. “They’ve seen the response. Now they refine.”
My stomach turns.
“Meaning they come back.”
“Yes.”
“And now they know what matters.”
Willem doesn’t soften it.
“No,” he says. “Now they know who matters.”
I go still. Because that changes everything.
I set my palm flat against the counter, grounding myself.
“So staying here,” I say, still to Willem, “that’s not about control.”
“No.”
“It’s because I’m still a target.”
“Yes.”
I let out a breath.
“He said he wouldn’t come after me again.”
Willem’s gaze doesn’t shift.
“And he meant it.”
My eyes flick toward Marius then. He still hasn’t moved. Still watches. Still holds that same hard, tight control. Still isn’t arguing.
“So if I leave,” I say slowly, now looking at Willem but with Marius suddenly part of every word, “I’m on my own.”
“Yes.”
Silence stretches.
Only then do I turn fully toward the doorway.
“This is because you came to my farm,” I say.
This time I don’t say it to Willem.
I say it to Marius.
The kitchen holds still around the words. Light on the floor. Cooling coffee. Willem at the counter, quiet now because the conversation no longer belongs to him.
Marius looks at me for one long second, then another.
“Yes,” he says.
No defense. No attempt to soften it. No lie.
The honesty of it hits harder than denial would have.
I stare at him, feeling something in my chest shift again, not into fear, not fully into anger either, but into a recognition I don’t want and can’t refuse.
Nothing about this has been random. Not the shipment.
Not his visit. Not the attack. Not even me being here now, in his house, in his kitchen, drinking his coffee and learning in pieces just how much of my life was rearranged the moment he stepped onto my land.
“You brought this to me,” I say.
Marius’s expression doesn’t change, but something in the room does. Willem feels it first in the silence. I feel it in the way Marius stays exactly where he is, as though moving now would make something uglier happen faster.
“Yes,” he says.
Again, no defense. Just truth.
I look down at the counter because looking at him while he admits it feels like standing too close to a fire and realizing too late that the heat wasn’t accidental.
When I speak again, my voice is quieter.
“You could have said that sooner.”
“I could have.”
That is almost worse.
I let out a low breath that wants to become a laugh and fails halfway into something more brittle.
“You really are impossible.”
Something shifts, barely, at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. Nothing as easy as that.
Willem stays where he is and says nothing. There is no need. This is why Marius should have told me himself. Not because I would have taken it better, but because being forced to pull the truth out of a house like this makes every answer feel like a trap.
I lift the mug again, though I don’t drink.
“So now what?” I ask.
This time the question is for Marius.
He comes fully into the room at last, not closing the distance in a way that feels like pressure, only enough that the doorway no longer divides us.
“Now,” he says, “you stop thinking in terms of going back to what your life looked like three days ago.”
The words land hard. Because I already know they’re true.
“You recover,” he continues. “You stay where I can protect the line. And I find out who decided they could use you to reach me.”
He says it like a vow and an order were forced into the same shape.
My fingers tighten once more around the mug. I don’t answer immediately. My mind is still catching up to what the truth has cost and what it will keep costing.
When I finally look at him again, my eyes are clearer than before. Not calmer. Clearer.
“I still hate this.”
“I know.”
That answer, at least, is immediate. And honest.
For now, it’s enough to keep the room from breaking open again.