Chapter 12
SAGE
Ispend the rest of the afternoon in my room, obsessing over Severin’s phone and trying not to think about him at all. After everything that’s happened, for once, without anyone asking me to, I’m happy to stay in my room.
Especially now that I’m allowed to have a fire lit. The chill that usually seeps from the stone walls has retreated, replaced by a cocoon of heat that makes my skin feel drowsy and heavy, as I watch the rain claw at the windows like desperate, drizzly fingers.
I’m curled up on the bed, writing down everything I know and still need to find out in the notebook I stole.
The important points I underline several times.
I also read the news clipping over and over, hoping it might provide details about the Swanley family tragedy that I didn’t see before.
Usually, I’d research the story on the internet, but I can’t.
At least now I know that was where I saw it before. Ragg is the name of the reporter whom Mundel mentioned. And Tobias Ragg wrote the article in the newspaper clipping I took from Severin’s office. Could it be the same Ragg?
By evening, my nerves are frayed.
Every time I hear footsteps in the corridor, I tense up, certain that Severin has discovered that I’ve taken his phone.
Even the helicopter buzzing ahead makes me jumpy.
In the distance, it hovers over the lake, heading towards the island.
I stand at the window and watch it for a few moments. That must be the reporter, arriving.
I’m almost grateful for the distraction when Kathy knocks. Her eyes miss nothing as she takes in the Band-Aids around my fingers.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
I move my hand out of view. “Oh, it’s nothing.”
Her lips thin, but she doesn’t persist. “Master Troy will be in meetings this evening. It might be best to stay in your room for dinner.”
“Meetings?”
“Business meetings. Nothing that would interest you, my dear.” But something in her tone suggests she doesn’t quite believe that. She pauses, taking in my uneaten lunch tray on the bed. “I’ll bring your dinner up a little later?”
So much for not being a prisoner.
A message slips through the chaos and lights up my phone. It’s from Nola replying to mine from earlier.
I should be able to break into a phone. What’s the model?
Just so you know, skipping therapy to live with a serial killer and texting back that you’re “fine” is really annoying. Call soon. Laine keeps dragging me to eat veggie grill for lunch every day, and I’m allergic to halloumi.
When the storm starts to pick up, and I can’t stand it anymore, I get out of bed.
It’s raining so hard that the sound seems to echo inside my skull.
What kind of business meeting happens here on a stormy evening, anyway?
And why specifically do I have to stay away?
As I go to leave my room, the door won’t budge.
It’s locked.
Did Kathy lock me in? No, I don’t think so…
There were footsteps earlier stopping outside, but I was so afraid it was Severin that I ran into the bathroom. I try the handle again just to be sure. No, definitely locked. What do I do now?
The rain tap-tap-tapping against the French doors draws my attention there first, but they have brand-new locks that I can’t open.
So I wander into the bathroom to take a look at the frosted windows.
The number of times I’ve climbed out of similar ones at home to get rid of my father’s men sent to follow me around, I’ve lost count.
Without thinking, I climb onto the bathtub and unhook the latch on the window. It’s a tight fit, but I squeeze through.
Outside, it’s spitting rain rather than throwing buckets. But I’m still getting soaked, and one of the buttons on my borrowed tulip trousers has popped off, but at least I’m not locked in my room.
“Nice try, Mundel.” I breathe out. I’ve been climbing out of locked rooms for as long as I can remember.
Wrapping my cardigan around me to keep the rain off my skin, I start toward the bootroom door at the side of the house and go inside.
In the hallway, there’s no one around, though the shadows seem to lean closer.
Voices are coming from the billiard table room, so I make myself as small as possible and move as close as I dare.
“—told you she’s becoming a problem for us.” It sounds like Mundel. I’m beginning to hate that man.
“And your point being?” Severin’s voice drawls, low with irritation. “I deal with problems all the time, what’s one more?”
“She’s been snooping around, asking questions. She was listening in on me and Kathy this morning.”
“I said, I’ll deal with her,” Severin replies, but there’s tension in his voice.
There’s a muffled response, but I can’t quite make out the words.
Palms slick with nerves, I swallow hard. They’re talking about me. He’s going to deal with me how?
In the same way he did with me. Nell sweet-talks in my ear.
The sound of footsteps in the hallway behind me makes me panic. I turn around, ready to duck into an alcove, as a man emerges from the bathroom.
“Oh!” I step back, startled.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you.” He smiles when I just stare at him. Tall with black curly hair and dark brown eyes, he’s too well-dressed to be one of Severin’s staff. And he’s completely unfamiliar.
“Sorry, I was just…” I tail off.
“Where are my manners?” He extends his hand. “Tobias Ragg. I’m the journalist here to interview Mr. Severin. You must be...”
Ragg! “I’m…er…Sage.
“Are you a guest here as well?”
“Something like that.”
“We’ve met before?”
He offers me a curious look, brow screwed up as if he’s mentally trying to place me but failing to do so, and it’s bothering him.
Many people around here know my father through his businesses, but not me.
I was never able to leave my parents’ estate much.
I guess I have my father’s look. And Nell’s.
Shaking my head, I smile at him to soften the blow. I know how frustrating that can be when you want to recall something and can’t. It’s my constant state of mind these days.
“You write for the Fleetwater Gazette?” If he’s the same Tobias Ragg who wrote that news article then….
His eyebrows lift with surprise. “You know my work?”
“I recognize your name from the paper.” My stomach knots as I take the plunge. “You wrote about the Swanley family fire three years ago.”
Something changes in his expression, his interest sharpening into focus. “That’s right. Terrible business. Such a tragedy. Thank god the devil that did it was put behind bars.” He pauses, brow furrowing. “Why do you ask?”
“Just curious about local history.” I try to keep my voice casual. “This was their estate, wasn’t it?”
I’m treading a thin line. I probably shouldn’t be talking to this man with kind eyes that seem to bore right into your soul. But I need more answers.
“It was indeed.” He studies me more carefully now. “You said your name was Sage? I didn’t catch your last name?”
I hesitate. “Lovett.”
His eyes widen slightly. “Lovett. That’s...interesting. There’s been some business dealings between your family and Severin recently, hasn’t there?”
“Y...es.”
“Didn’t your father’s conservation company owned Grayfleet briefly, before Severin acquired it anonymously at an auction?”
My pulse quickens. My father owned Grayfleet? When? That explains why he’s involved in the property agreement I found in Severin’s office and how it’s so explicitly tied to my marriage.
“And now you’re here as Severin’s… guest?” There’s a note of professional curiosity in his voice, but it’s the spark in his eyes that makes my chest feel like it’s in a vice.
“Um, it’s complicated. Sorry, what conservation company?”
“Wychshire Heritage Extraction Ltd.” Tobias’s eyes narrow. “You must know that it’s one of your father’s more successful businesses. Stripping historic properties to make hard cash?”
My stomach roils. “I didn’t know.”
He leans forward slightly, watching my reaction. “How interesting. And yet you’re there with Severin now. Why exactly?”
I flash him a smile. “I told you, it’s complicated.”
He smiles too, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I was at the Grayfleet auction. Your father was there, of course. Severin wasn’t there as his proxy did the bidding—not unusual for someone of his calibre buying real estate anonymously. But I saw you there. Standing off to the sidelines.”
“Me?”
“Your hair was different, but that’s where I recognize you from now, I’m sure.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“Are you certain?” He stares at me as if trying to see through me, clearly disappointed I’m not giving him anything useful.
“Not me.” I would remember that.
His eyes shutter, and his mouth makes a flat line. He’s not happy that I’m being evasive. “Right, then it was nice bumping into you, Miss Lovett. I should get back to our illustrious host.”
“Wait!”
He stops. “Yes?”
“In your article about the Swanleys…” I take a breath, seeing my chance to twist the conversation back. “…did you ever find out what really happened to the surviving children?”
Tobias tilts his head, clearly intrigued by my line of questioning. Well…as the article said, their daughter, Joanna, disappeared at the time and is still missing.”
My mouth is suddenly dry. “I meant the son.”
“Edward Swanley went to prison after he was convicted of manslaughter.”
A name. I have a name!
“I mean, what happened to him…after he got out? There wasn’t anything in the article about it.” The article was ripped in half, so I wouldn’t even know if it did. Tobias’s expression doesn’t change, so apparently not.
“The records were sealed. Juvenile case, you understand. The boy was sentenced to seven years in a Young Offender’s Institution, but I always had a hunch—” He stops, abruptly, studying my face. “Why are you so interested in a decade-old tragedy, Miss Lovett? Do you know something?”
“No, nothing. It’s just this place has always intrigued me, and well, now I’m here.” I shrug my shoulders. “I’m curious.”
“Is that right?” He reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a crisp white business card. “Here.” He offers it to me. “Since you won’t talk to me now. Maybe you will when not entombed by such…oppressive surroundings.”
I stare at the card like it might bite.
“There would be substantial compensation for your inconvenience, of course.” He touches my arm.
I jerk my gaze up at him. “I’m not interested in money. I prefer the truth.”
Tobias cocks his head. “Then we have that in common, Miss Lovett.”
Before I can reply to that, footsteps resound, coming into the hallway.
“What the hell is going on here?” Severin’s voice cuts through the conversation like ice.
He’s standing in the doorway, his expression thunderous as he takes in Tobias and me talking. My nerves are set alight by the way he looks right at me.
I stare at him wide-eyed, drenched in fright, like a naughty schoolgirl with my hand in the cookie jar. Without knowing why, I step back, away from Tobias, shoving the card he gave me in my pocket.
“Just introducing myself,” Tobias says easily, hands in pockets too now, but I can see him taking note of Severin’s reaction.
“Sage.” Severin’s voice is deceptively calm, but his eyes are blazing. “I thought you were resting.”
I open my mouth to say…to say what?
When Tobias replies for me.
“Miss Lovett was just telling me that she’s staying here,” Tobias cuts in, clearly picking up on the tension. “And I was just wondering why. It was her grandfather’s bank that oversaw the auction for the sale of Grayfleet, wasn’t it? From her father’s company to yours?”
Severin glares at him. “Stick to what you were invited for, Ragg. Business profiles. Not gossip.”
“I never agreed to that, although your man tried to blackmail me into signing some ridiculous NDA on the way over. You can ask him yourself. I haven’t signed a thing yet.”
Severin’s jaw tightens. “Is that a fact?”
“I deal only in facts, Mr. Severin, from legitimate sources. Like the ones that tell me anonymous investments with no paper trail funded your rapid rise to wealth. And now I’m here…” He glances at me and flashes a smile. “I’m very curious.”
Severin bares his teeth, but then his jaw locks and his eyes darken. I’m expecting him to blurt out something assholey like, “Go fuck yourself.”
Instead, he says softly. “Careful, Ragg.”
But Tobias doesn’t hear him or care, and carries on, stalking toward him.
“I have to say, there was a lot of money to be made after the Swanleys lost this place. Finding the Lovett’s daughter living in your house raises some interesting questions about the nature of your business relationship with her family, doesn’t it?
You overpaid for this dump, three times over what it’s worth after the Lovett’s stripped it bare.
Why is Lovett’s daughter here, Troy? What twisted deals have you done this time? ”
Severin’s eyes cut through the dark hallway. “She’s here because she’s mine.”
Ragg falters. “Yours?”
“My fiancé.”
I stare at Severin with an open mouth.
Tobias looks at Severin and then back at me.
“I didn’t know you were getting married. Did I miss an announcement?” But then something shifts behind Tobias’ gaze as Severin comes over to stand beside me, and he slips a fake smile into place. “But, my mistake. Congratulations to you both. When’s the big day?”
“Next week.” Severin’s voice is silk on steel, one hand clasping around my waist. I’m still in shock as he pulls me towards him, almost protectively.
Or possessively.
One of the two.
“Oh?” Tobias smirks. “That’s soon. You must be exhausted from planning, Miss Lovett. Is that why you were resting?” His eyes switch to me. His attention feels like insects crawling over my skin.
I feel stiff in Severin’s arms, like a marionette with broken strings. I’ve forgotten how to move. Until he grips my waist so tight that it almost hurts.
“Oh, I—I was.” I give a little gasp.
“She’s had a busy few days. We’re planning it together,” Severin adds.
Tobias’s brows raise. “Oh, despite the Harper Black deal in the works?” He keeps staring at me, though, like he knows I’m the weakest link.
Severin laughs, but he’s not happy. I feel it in his iron fingers as they dig in. “We’re in love. What can I say?”
I’m still staring open-mouthed at Severin when he tells Tobias he must come to the wedding next Sunday.