Chapter Nine #2
Sienna's hands had started shaking only now, delayed and furious, and she pressed them flat against the counter to still them, the cold marble grounding her in a way the last ten minutes hadn't managed to.
"He said Damian isn't answering his phone."
"He isn't supposed to be reachable today.
That was the plan — no calls, nothing that could be traced or intercepted while he's meeting with people who'd very much like an excuse to doubt his discretion.
" Mrs. Voss's mouth thinned. "The plan didn't account for Julian finding this house four days into it. I'll admit that."
"Then how do we reach him."
"We don't. Not directly." Mrs. Voss was already moving again, pulling a second phone from a drawer Sienna hadn't known existed, small and unmarked, the kind of thing that looked deliberately forgettable.
"There's a man he trusts to interrupt him only for exactly this.
I've never had to use the number before. I'm rather hoping it still works."
The call connected on the second ring, a low voice answering with nothing so much as a syllable of greeting, and Mrs. Voss spoke fast and clipped, feeding the man everything — Marcus's voice on the intercom, the property, the thirty-second deadline, the words *Saturday's arriving early* delivered like a gift Marcus had clearly enjoyed handing over.
Whatever the voice on the other end said in return made Mrs. Voss's shoulders drop half an inch, the first visible relief Sienna had seen from her since the panel first crackled to life.
"He got it," Mrs. Voss said, setting the phone down at last. "He'll tell him the moment there's a break he can use without blowing whatever cover he's built for today.
It won't be immediate. I need you to understand that.
Whatever's happening in that room right now, it matters more than either of us wants it to, and pulling him out of it early could cost him considerably more than an interrupted meeting. "
"So we wait."
"So we wait." Mrs. Voss studied her for a long moment, something calculating and not unkind behind it. "You're handling this better than I expected."
"I don't feel like I'm handling it well."
"No one ever does, in the middle of it. That's rather the definition of the middle of it.
" A ghost of dry humor moved through the words, gone as quickly as it came.
"Come. Sit. I'll make tea neither of us wants, and we'll wait together instead of separately, which I've found is marginally more bearable. "
They sat at the same table where Mrs. Voss had told her, days before, about a boy pulled screaming from a burning corridor, and the tea went cold between them without either of them touching it, the house settling into a watchful quiet that felt entirely unlike the comfortable silences of the days before Saturday had a name attached to it.
It was nearly two hours before the front door opened.
Sienna heard it before she saw him — the particular weight of his footsteps, faster than his usual unhurried stride, the sound of a man who had broken every rule of his own careful patience to get back to a house he wasn't supposed to be able to leave yet.
He came through the kitchen doorway still in the dark suit he'd left in that morning, tie gone, jacket torn at the shoulder seam in a way that told its own story, the mask slightly askew like he hadn't stopped to right it in whatever room he'd walked out of.
He crossed the kitchen in four strides and had her face in both hands before she'd fully risen from the chair, searching her with an intensity that felt less like checking for injury and more like a man confirming, against every rational expectation, that she was still exactly where he'd left her.
"I'm fine," she said, before he could ask. "He never got past the gate. Mrs. Voss locked the whole property down before he finished his sentence."
Something in Damian's shoulders didn't relax so much as recalculate, the fear rerouting itself into something colder and more purposeful. "Tell me everything he said. Every word. Don't soften it for me."
She told him. Marcus's voice, unbothered and pleasant even while threatening her; the flowers connected to the east wing window he'd apparently been watching for months before she ever arrived; the thirty-second deadline; the message delivered like a closing line in a performance he'd clearly enjoyed giving.
Damian listened without interrupting, his jaw going harder with every sentence, one hand never leaving hers the entire time, as though letting go might undo whatever reassurance holding on had bought him.
When she told him she was the one who'd answered the intercom, that she'd wanted to hear what Marcus would say rather than let Mrs. Voss handle it alone, something in him went very still in a way that had nothing composed left inside it at all.
His hand found her jaw instead of her hand, tilting her face up to his with more force than the gesture required, his fingers pressing hard enough that she felt it in her teeth.
"Don't," he said, low, each word deliberate, nothing gentle left in his voice.
"Don't ever hand that man your voice again.
Do you understand me?" For one long, disorienting second she understood exactly what Mrs. Voss had meant, days ago, about danger and devotion sharing the same body — understood it not as an idea but as the actual pressure of his fingers against her jaw, the stranger's look in his eyes that had nothing careful left in it.
Then it broke, all at once, horror flooding in behind the anger as he seemed to hear himself, and his hand fell away like it had been burned.
"I'm sorry." His voice had gone rough, unsteady.
"I would never actually hurt you, Sienna.
I need you to know that. I just —" He stopped, dragging a hand through his hair, some old fear finally surfacing behind the fury.
"I spent two hours today not knowing if you were alive.
I don't always know what to do with that, once it's over. "
"Saturday's arriving early," he repeated, quiet, when she finished. "He said that."
"Word for word."