24. Quinn
QUINN
A DOGGY BAG FULL OF COAL
Dimitris Burelian’s estate looked less like a house and more like a very expensive argument for why one man should not be allowed unlimited money and several lifetimes to spend it.
It sat behind iron gates on a private road that curved through acres of manicured green, the house itself all pale stone, tall windows, and terraces designed for people who had never carried a laundry basket up four flights of stairs. Two fountains flanked the drive. One had actual fire in it.
“Subtle,” I murmured.
Rafe stood beside me, one hand resting near Max’s leash, his face unreadable in the way that meant he was reading everything. “Phoenixes are rarely subtle.”
“I’m getting that.”
Max leaned against my leg, restored to full dignity after two days of enforced sickroom quiet and one highly supervised block walk.
I’d brought him because he was an excellent icebreaker, and because leaving him out of our legal strategy felt rude.
Also, if I was going to meet an ancient phoenix collector who had apparently been sitting on Rafe’s family incense burner and smiling about it on television, I wanted my dog for emotional support.
The front doors opened before we reached them.
Dimitris stood at the top of the steps in his younger form, wearing a cerulean suit and the kind of smile that made me understand why people in fairy tales accepted obviously cursed invitations.
He was beautiful in a curated way. Golden skin, dark hair brushed back from his face, eyes bright enough to suggest warmth and old enough to suggest he knew exactly how many people had mistaken warmth for safety.
At the auction, his old form had felt like a performance of harmlessness. This was vanity.
“Rafael,” he said, delighted. “Ms. Bradley. And the famous dog.”
Max sat.
Dimitris placed a hand over his heart. “Already judging me. I adore him.”
“He has good instincts,” Rafe said.
“And you have brought them into my home. Very brave of you.”
“I was under the impression you invited us.”
“To discuss an object, yes.” Dimitris descended the steps, gaze sliding to me with cheerful mischief. “Not to wound me with judgment before lunch.”
“I can take him back to the car,” I said.
Dimitris looked genuinely appalled. “Absolutely not. He is the best-dressed person here.”
Max wore no tie, only his working collar.
The inside of the house was worse than the outside.
White walls, dark floors, enormous windows, objects displayed as if the entire place were a museum that had gotten too rich to be held accountable.
Sculptures stood in lit alcoves. Bronze masks floated behind glass.
Painted screens glowed under hidden lighting.
Every room looked like a billionaire had walked through history with a shopping cart and no adult supervision.
Dimitris gave us the tour.
“This,” he said, gesturing toward a long case of jeweled daggers, “came from a private collection in Vienna.”
“Legally?” I asked.
His smile widened. “Define legally.”
A muscle in Rafe’s jaw ticked.
I glanced at him. “I think I found the wrong question.”
“You found the correct one,” Rafe said.
Dimitris laughed. “How dreary you both are. History is rarely clean.”
He showed us rooms full of paintings, relics, armor, carved boxes, old books locked behind special glass.
Eventually, we reached a lower gallery where the security became noticeably more serious.
Cameras tucked into the ceiling. Pressure sensors near the cases.
Doors that required Dimitris’s handprint, his voice, and something he breathed into a gold-edged panel that made the whole room hum softly.
“You seem proud of the system,” Rafe said.
“I am proud of things that work.” Dimitris waved one elegant hand as the final door opened.
“I have very little staff. Employees are expensive, unreliable, and prone to developing opinions. Security systems are expensive, reliable, and only develop opinions if one has made a very specific programming error.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” I said.
He smiled. “Isn’t it?”
The secure room beyond was smaller than I expected and colder. A few objects rested inside separate cases, each lit from beneath. A crown of blackened silver. A bowl that seemed to hold smoke though nothing burned inside it. A blade so thin it looked like a line drawn through the air.
The incense burner wasn’t there.
I knew before Rafe asked, “Where is it?”
Dimitris turned back, almost amused. “Not here.”
Rafe’s eyes hardened.
“Oh, don’t glare. Your little burner is charming, but it is not in my top tier.”
“My family heirloom is not charming.”
“No? Then it is deeply meaningful and insufficiently rare.” Dimitris tapped one case lightly with a knuckle. “These require certain protections. The burner is upstairs in the devotional objects gallery.”
I felt Rafe go still beside me.
The insult was quiet, but it landed. Dimitris hadn’t even valued the thing enough to secure it with his most precious collection. He had wanted it because Rafe wanted it. Because ownership, to him, was only about appetite.
By the time we reached the meeting room, my optimism had started to curdle.
The room opened onto a terrace overlooking the grounds. A round table had been set with tea, small sandwiches, fruit, and tiny pastries arranged in a fan shape. Max settled beneath my chair, accepting the entire estate’s nonsense with more grace than I had.
Dimitris sat opposite us, folded his hands, and smiled.
“So,” he said. “The incense burner.”
Rafe didn’t touch his tea. “Name your terms.”
“There are no terms.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry?”
Dimitris looked at me, still smiling. “No apology necessary.”
“But you invited us here.”
“I did.”
“To discuss the burner.”
“Correct.”
“And now you’re saying you won’t discuss it?”
“I am discussing it. I am telling you no, you cannot have it.”
Rafe’s voice went low. “You wasted our time.”
“Of course.” Dimitris leaned back in his chair, pleased as a cat in sunlight. “You have been making such impressive progress. I wanted to see what would happen when hope arrived wearing a nice jacket.”
For a second, I couldn’t speak, but I got over that quickly. “That is deeply weird behavior.”
He laughed. “I am a phoenix, Ms. Bradley. What is time to me except a blink between rebirths?”
“A limited resource for everyone else in the room.”
“Precisely. That’s what makes spending it so satisfying.”
Rafe’s hand curled once against the arm of his chair, then relaxed. “You have no claim to the burner.”
“I have possession.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“To sentimental men, perhaps.”
The anger I felt then was hot and embarrassed and deeply personal. I had found the burner. I had emailed. I had let myself believe that maybe the world could give Rafe this cleanly, without forcing him to fight for every piece of his own family.
I should have known better.
Max rose and pressed his shoulder against my knee.
Dimitris looked down at him, and his smile lost its shine. “Ah,” he said. “He knows exactly when he’s needed, doesn’t he?”
“He’s selective,” I said. “You’re still under review.”
That made him laugh again.
When we finally stood to leave, Dimitris summoned one of his two staff members, a silent woman in black who appeared so quickly I suspected she had been waiting behind the wall.
“Parting gifts,” he said.
“Unnecessary,” Rafe replied.
“Oh, I insist. I would hate for you to leave with nothing but resentment.”
“That ship has sailed,” I snapped.
He beamed at me. The staff member handed over three neat paper bags with the estate crest stamped in gold.
“For the excellent dog,” Dimitris said, pointing to the first. “Imported venison treats. For Ms. Bradley, a small apology for the wasted time. I don’t expect forgiveness.”
I looked inside my bag despite myself. A silk scarf. Deep green, hand-rolled edges, patterned with tiny gold birds that looked suspiciously like phoenixes.
Of course.
“And for Rafe.” Dimitris’s smile widened as Rafe opened his bag.
Inside was a lump of coal.
Dimitris began laughing before either of us said anything.
“It’s a doggy bag,” he said, clearly delighted with himself. “Do you see? Because the dog?—”
“Yes,” Rafe said.
“—and because coal?—”
“We understand.”
“Marvelous.”
I took Max’s leash before I said something that might create an international incident in a breakfast room.
Outside, the air seemed too bright.
The gates stood at the end of the drive, sunlight glinting off the iron. I walked faster than necessary, Max at my side, the stupid scarf bag crinkling in my hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Rafe turned his head toward me. “For what?”
“I thought it might work.”
“It was worth pursuing.”
“He played me.”
“No.” Rafe’s voice sharpened just enough to stop me. “He played his own vanity. You found the burner. You secured the meeting. He showed us the property, the security, and the way he thinks. That’s not nothing.”
I looked at him.
He stood there in the center of Dimitris’s absurd driveway, handsome and angry and still finding a way to give me credit when I felt like an idiot.
“He still said no,” I said.
“For now.”
“Rafe, he gave you a gift bag with a lump of coal.”
“I have survived greater insults.”
“He wasted your time because he thought it was funny.”
“He underestimated you because he thought it was funny.” Rafe’s gaze held mine. “That is a mistake men keep making.”
My throat tightened.
Terrible timing. Terrible, terrible timing, because the man had just said something so reassuring and kind that my whole chest wanted to walk toward him without asking permission.
“Rafe,” I said softly.
His face changed.
The space between us thinned.
Then Max barked. A hard, full-bodied bark that cracked through the driveway and sent every thought in my head scattering.
I turned at once.
Max stood rigid, nose angled toward the far side of the front gate. His tail was high, body locked. He barked again, then pulled forward against the leash toward a white service van parked outside the gate.
My skin went cold.
Rafe looked from Max to me. “What is he trained to detect?”
“A lot of things.”
“Quinn.”
“Drugs. Weapons. Explosives.”
The last word changed the air around us. Rafe went still in a way that made every piece of him look suddenly less human.
Max barked again.
We ran.
The gate should have opened when Dimitris’s guard saw us coming. It didn’t. The booth near the entrance stood empty, its little fan still turning inside the open window. Rafe reached the gate first and tried the control panel. Nothing. I ducked into the booth and grabbed the intercom handset.
Dead.
“Shit.”
Rafe looked through the bars at the van, then back toward the house. “Stay here.”
“No.”
“Quinn.”
“No!”
His shoulders shifted, a ripple of power moving under his skin. Heat pressed outward. He was already beginning to change.
I grabbed his wrist.
The warmth of him jolted through my palm. His eyes cut to mine, gold-edged and furious.
“You’re not going alone,” I said.
“This isn’t a goddamn negotiation.”
“Correct. I’m not asking.”
“Someone may be inside.”
“Then you need someone small enough to fit where you can’t, a dog trained to find explosives, and a woman who is done letting rich men waste her time.”
For one second, he looked like he wanted to argue badly enough to scorch the gate off its hinges.
Then Max barked again, loud and urgent.
Rafe looked toward the house.
When he looked back at me, there was fear beneath his anger. Not for himself.
For me.
That almost undid me.
Instead, I tightened my grip on his wrist. “Together.”
His jaw flexed.
“Stay behind me,” he said.
“Sure.”
His eyes narrowed.
Then the first window on the east side of the house burst outward in a flash of light.
Rafe pulled me against him before the sound reached us, one arm hard around my back, his body between mine and the spray of glass glittering far across the lawn.