Chapter Nine
Voice Through the Intercom
For a long moment Sienna couldn't make her mouth work at all.
The intercom sat mounted beside the kitchen door, an unremarkable brass panel she'd walked past a dozen times without a second thought, and now it seemed to fill the entire room, Marcus's voice curling out of the small speaker like smoke finding every corner it could reach.
Mrs. Voss reached it first.
"This line is for deliveries," she said, flat and immediate, already reaching to end the call. "You have the wrong house."
"I have exactly the right house, Mrs. Voss.
I watched the car come in myself, four days ago, very early, very quiet.
" Marcus's amusement didn't so much as flicker.
"You're better at your job than I gave you credit for.
This place isn't on file anywhere I could find it, which took considerably more effort to solve than I'd like to admit.
Julian sends his compliments, along with his patience, which I should warn you both is not unlimited. "
"Damian isn't here." Mrs. Voss's hand hadn't left the panel, knuckles pale around it. "Whatever message you're carrying, carry it back."
"Oh, I know he isn't." Something shifted in Marcus's tone, easy and almost gentle, the kind of gentleness that made the hair rise along Sienna's arms faster than any shout could have.
"That's rather the point of choosing today, wouldn't you say?
A man can only be in one room at a time, and he's chosen to spend this particular morning very far from the one that actually matters.
" A pause, unhurried, deliberate. "Miss Cole.
I know you're standing there. I can hear you not breathing. "
Sienna made herself breathe. Made herself step toward the panel instead of away from it, ignoring the sharp look Mrs. Voss threw her, the older woman's free hand coming up in a gesture that meant, unmistakably, *stay back*.
"What does Julian want," Sienna said, and was almost proud of how steady it came out.
"Isn't that refreshing." Marcus's voice warmed, genuinely pleased, as though she'd finally given him the conversation he'd been waiting for.
"Straight to it. No pretending you don't know who I am, no wasted breath asking me to leave.
I can see why he keeps you." A beat. "Julian would like a conversation.
Nothing dramatic — a car, a drive, an hour of your time, returned to this gate exactly as you left it.
He finds it easier to negotiate with a man who understands what he stands to lose.
At the moment, Damian doesn't seem to believe he has anything left worth losing. I imagine you'd disagree."
"That's not a conversation. That's a hostage."
"Such an ugly word for an invitation." Marcus made a small sound, almost a laugh, low and unbothered.
"Think of it instead as leverage with better manners than most. No one touches you, Miss Cole.
No one so much as raises a voice. You'll be home by dinner, and Damian will spend the drive back from Saturday's little gathering discovering exactly how much easier men become when they understand the cost of continuing to be difficult. "
Mrs. Voss's thumb found the panel's disconnect button and pressed it before Sienna could answer, cutting the line dead in a burst of static that felt, for one disorienting second, louder than Marcus's voice had been.
"You are not answering that man," Mrs. Voss said, already moving, already pulling a phone from the pocket of her cardigan with hands that weren't quite steady despite the brisk certainty in her voice.
"You are not standing near a window. You are going to the room I showed you on your first morning here, the one behind the pantry, and you are going to stay there until I say otherwise. "
"He'll just call back."
"Let him." Mrs. Voss was already dialing, phone pressed to her ear, pacing a short, tight line across the kitchen tile.
"Come on. Answer. Come on—" A muscle worked in her jaw.
"Voicemail. He's got the phone off, or he's somewhere it can't reach him, which is exactly the kind of luck that man never has when it would actually help him.
" She lowered the phone, exhaled hard through her nose, and dialed again, a different number this time, rattling off an address and a single clipped sentence — *he's found the house, get someone here now* — before Sienna had even fully processed what was happening.
The intercom crackled back to life on its own, Marcus's patience apparently having limits after all.
"That was rude," he said, mild as ever. "Though I confess I expected it.
Mrs. Voss has never once made this easy, in all the years I've been aware of her.
Tell her I said the ledger trick worked beautifully, by the way.
The one where she keeps a frightened girl busy sorting linens so she doesn't have time to be frightened properly.
I watched you do it for three days out that east wing window before we ever moved you here. She's very good at her job."
Sienna's stomach dropped straight through the floor.
"You were watching Ashworth House."
"I've been watching Ashworth House for longer than you've been living in it, Miss Cole.
Long enough to know your schedule, your habits, which window you favor when you can't sleep, how long you linger at it before you finally close the curtain.
" The amusement in his voice thinned, just slightly, into something colder underneath.
"I'd like you to understand something, since I don't think Damian has been entirely forthcoming about the shape of what you agreed to when you walked into that study.
Julian doesn't lose. He simply hasn't finished winning yet.
Everything since — the gala, the car in the dark, the very tasteful flower this morning — has been him being patient. Patience has a bottom, even for him."
"Then why send flowers at all," Sienna said, surprising herself with how much steel had crept into it. "Why not just take what he wants and stop pretending it's a negotiation."
A pause, longer this time, and when Marcus spoke again something in his voice had shifted, some careful calculation recalibrating on the other end of the line.
"Because Julian isn't his father," he said finally.
"Whatever else you think of him, he'd prefer to win this the way his father never managed to — cleanly, publicly, with every man in that room on Saturday watching Damian hand over what's left of his father's name because the alternative finally became more expensive than the surrender.
He doesn't want a body. Bodies raise questions, and questions are considerably harder to control than a frightened girl in a beautiful house.
He wants Damian broken in a very specific, very visible way.
You, Miss Cole, are simply the fastest road there. "
Mrs. Voss had finished her second call and was crossing back toward the panel, something grim and decided settling over her features, and Sienna watched her reach past the intercom to a small panel beside it — a series of switches Sienna hadn't noticed before, tucked discreetly into the same brass housing.
"You have thirty seconds before I lock this entire property down around you," Mrs. Voss said, and there was nothing brisk about her voice now, nothing clipped.
It was flat and cold and entirely without patience.
"You're standing outside a gate you cannot open without a code you do not have, on a property with a perimeter Damian spent considerably more than twelve years reinforcing.
Whatever Julian thinks he's owed today, it isn't waiting for him past that intercom. "
"Thirty seconds," Marcus repeated, sounding almost delighted by the deadline, as though she'd handed him a game rather than a threat.
"I do admire efficiency. For what it's worth — and I suspect it's worth very little, coming from me — I'd tell Damian to answer his phone next time.
A man who spends this much effort building walls around the people he loves ought to remember that walls only work if someone's actually watching them.
" A soft click, almost gentle. "Tell him Saturday's arriving early, Mrs. Voss. Tell him I said so myself."
The line went dead for good this time, static folding into silence, and the kitchen felt suddenly, unbearably loud with the absence of his voice.
Mrs. Voss didn't waste time on relief. She was already moving, flipping switches along the hidden panel with the efficient, unhurried competence of a woman who had clearly rehearsed this exact sequence more times than Sienna wanted to think about, the house around them answering with small mechanical sounds — the distant, muffled thunk of something heavy sliding into place at the front gate, a soft whir from somewhere in the walls that might have been shutters, might have been something else entirely.
"Was that real," Sienna asked, when the sounds finally settled. "The lockdown."
"It's real enough." Mrs. Voss set the phone down on the counter, finally allowing her hands to shake now that there was no one left to perform steadiness for.
"Whether it would hold against a man who actually wanted in badly enough, I couldn't tell you.
I've never had cause to find out. I'd rather not start today.
" She looked at Sienna properly then, something raw moving behind her usual composure. "You shouldn't have answered him."
"I wanted to hear what he'd say."
"That's exactly the kind of thinking that gets people like us killed, Miss Cole, and I mean that with considerably more affection than it sounds.
" But some of the hardness had gone out of her voice, replaced by something closer to grudging respect.
"For what it's worth, you didn't flinch.
I've watched grown men flinch talking to that one.
Whatever else you are, you're not that."