Chapter Three
SIENNA TRIES, SHE REALLY DOES.
But after two hours in the yellow room with Malcolm and seven of his half-baked ideas, she feels like she’s inching closer to a cliff, and more than ready to jump.
Instead, she paces the room, carving a straight line back and forth, as if trying to cut through the noise, while Malcolm sits in the desk chair, swiveling in a way that drives her mad as he spits out every solve that comes to mind, as if she hasn’t already thought of them, the difference being she knew right away that none of them would work, and he seems convinced that they will.
“That doesn’t even make sense!” she snaps when he suggests a Scooby Doo–level misdirect.
“It could work, if—”
“No,” she says, “it’s banal. It’s exactly what everyone will expect.”
“At least it’s in keeping with the series! Did you stop to think that maybe that’s why we’re here? Because our books keep to the formula? Because the formula works?”
“If that was even remotely true, we’d be a whole lot richer by now, don’t you think?”
The arrow hits its mark.
When she met Malcolm Buchanan, he was young (well, younger than he is now) and hungry.
He came from the kind of family that measured its history in generations, and it was impressed upon him from an early age that he and his brother Hamish had a legacy to uphold, one that included private schools and Oxbridge and twin careers in finance, their lives paved as neatly as a road.
Hamish had done his part, and Malcolm hadn’t—he’d gone off and gotten a degree in literature, declared himself an artist, which was apparently tantamount to treason.
He’d hardly been disowned, but the full extent of his family’s disapproval had been communicated to him, and the family money had been cut to a trickle in a misbegotten attempt to force him to get a “real” job.
Things between Malcolm and his parents had been frosty ever since.
“Sod them,” he’d said, recounting the story to Sienna over drinks on their first date. “They want a legacy? I’ll have a legacy. A whole catalog of work. Enough to merit its own shelf in every bookshop.”
Sienna had loved the boldness of it, been seduced by his hunger, his drive. He had that defiant gleam she’d always been drawn to. The light of a person ready to carry their own torch.
A famous crime writer.
He managed half, landing a book deal with a small press before his thirtieth birthday, which was something, of course.
He sent a copy to his father, to show off the family name in print, but the old man wasn’t impressed.
Apparently, Buchanan was a name to be whispered in the boardrooms and gentleman’s clubs of the City of London, not plastered across the front of a potboiler.
Malcolm published four more books, none of them bestsellers, but still sales were pretty decent.
Well received, and so was he, an absolute charmer, with energy to fill a room.
But then the press folded, and it wasn’t Malcolm’s fault, but it put his ledger in the red, marked him as someone who didn’t earn out.
And it was a slow slide down a steep hill after that.
It’s hard to start fresh once the shine has worn off.
But then Sienna came along—Sienna, with a fresh take and a good eye for story—and they were good together. His brass and her brain, his big swings and her tight prose.
In some ways, Penn Stonely was a victory. Certainly a step up from the small press to a larger imprint in Manhattan, even if the publisher wasn’t exactly a household name.
But in others, well, his father was right.
He hasn’t lived up to the family name. Hamish Buchanan now lives in London and has three homes and four cars, one of which is a Bentley, while they have one tiny apartment, twice mortgaged, and no car, because “it doesn’t make sense to have one in the city. ”
Not that Sienna cared. She didn’t want houses.
She didn’t want cars. She wanted to write, and she knew, if they worked hard enough, they would get there.
She was in it for the long haul. She thought he was too, but somewhere along the way, as the road went up instead of down, Malcolm got tired of climbing, and his ambition weakened, too much water over too little tea.
He didn’t want to make it.
He wanted to have made it. To be appreciated, recognized, revered.
He was always less interested in the writing itself than the accolades he assumed would inevitably follow.
Malcolm didn’t dream of blank pages and fresh pens, of hours alone with new ideas.
No, he dreamed of newspaper profiles, of magazine pieces, of headlining at big fancy festivals and being invited to literary salons like Arthur Fletch’s.
In short, he didn’t want to be a writer.
He just wanted to be famous.
“Well,” mutters Malcolm, crossing his arms, “it’s better than making Petrarch the killer. Pffff.”
Sienna groans in sheer frustration, and the fact that he’s probably right. But it’s the only idea she’s had that’s even close to working. “There’s something there,” she insists, and there is—she just hasn’t cracked it yet. She tears a sheet from the notebook and casts it aside.
Malcolm bends to take it up. He squints, trying to read the words.
“Christ, Sienna,” he says, tossing it aside with a scowl, “you could at least try to make it legible.” And she could, but the truth is, she keeps it messy on purpose, so he can’t read what she’s writing.
A tiny island of defiance that dates back to before they were married.
In retrospect, that might have been a sign.
Hindsight, she muses with a small internal sigh.
Malcolm surges to his feet. “Aha!” he says.
“No one actually says aha,” she mutters, but of course he isn’t listening.
“What if Julia finds a secret door, down into the tunnel—”
“She’s already in the tunnel,” says Sienna. “If you’d actually read the pages—”
“So sum it up for me.”
“Oh sure. While I’m at it, shall I recap the last four books? In case you forgot?”
“That would certainly be helpful.”
Sienna throws up her hands. “We don’t have time for this!”
“I don’t know what you want from me! Brainstorming is part of the process.”
“Maybe if you’d read the book instead of taking a goddamn nap—”
She flings a pillow at his head, but he catches it.
“You don’t have to be a bitch about it.”
Sienna rounds on Malcolm. He’s never called her that. Not ever. She waits to see if he’ll flinch, apologize, but he doesn’t, and Sienna realizes she’s done.
“You know what? Fuck this. I’ll break the story on my own.”
She starts toward the door, but Malcolm grabs her arm. “We’re supposed to be a team.”
Sienna looks down at the fingers circling her sleeve. “A team?” she hisses. “We haven’t been a team in years, Malcolm. Not since you started whining more than working and expecting me to pick up the slack. I’m sorry you don’t have the career that you want. But that isn’t my fault. Now, let go.”
He looks down at his hand on her arm, as if he doesn’t know how it got there. His fingers twitch, then loosen enough for her to pull free.
“We’re done,” she says, glaring at the disheveled man who used to be her husband. “Penn Stonely is officially dead.”
His face darkens. “We had a deal, Sienna—”
“Fuck your deal. I’m done propping you up.”
“I’ll take the dog.”
“I don’t care what you do, Malcolm,” she snaps, realizing it’s the truth.
He’s obviously bluffing—he really hates that dog—but even if he wasn’t, she’s so tired of playing by his ridiculous rules, of making herself small enough to fit inside his shadow.
“From now on,” she declares triumphantly, “I’m writing alone. ”
She eyes the typewriter, gauging its weight, but when she makes a move for it, Malcolm brings one hand down on the device. The other lands on the stack of yellow paper.
“These,” he growls, “don’t belong to Sienna Wood.”
She shakes her head. “Unbefuckinglievable,” she snaps, grabbing her notebook and slamming the door behind her.
* * *
SIENNA DECIDES, THEN AND THERE, THAT SHE is going to win.
Not just to spite Malcolm—though that will absolutely be the icing on the cake. This is her chance to break out, to break free, to start fresh with the backing of a major publisher and a seven-figure deal.
Money’s never been a motivating factor for Sienna—she used to write all the time, even when no one was paying her, and then, after she met Malcolm, she had his safety net, so it never mattered (to her) that the advances were modest, that they hardly ever earned out.
The work was enough. But now that she’s taking an ax to the ropes of that net, she needs a soft cushion on the ground, a way to land safely.
So she can get to her feet. Not as one half of Penn Stonely, but all of Sienna Wood.
Thanks to Arthur Fletch, she has a chance to do just that.
And she’s not about to let Malcolm stand in her way.
Her plan is to head straight to the cottage and tell Fletch’s editor she wants—no, needs—to write alone. Rufus will understand—she hopes—especially since it means having more samples to choose from. At least, that’s what she tells herself.
Because the alternative is that he’ll say no.
That they invited Penn Stonely, not Sienna Buchanan, soon-to-be Wood. That without Malcolm, she’s got no publishing clout, no credits to her name, no proof that she’s good enough to—
Sienna digs her nails into the notebook.
She knows that the voice in her head is more Malcolm than Mr. Beaumont.
Even so, she feels herself deflating, doubt slashing her sails.
She’s still moving toward the stairs, but her steps are dragging now, her feet leaden and her mind scrabbling to stay afloat.
Maybe that’s why she slows between Jaxon’s and Millie’s rooms, then stops, eyes sliding over the wallpaper. Her memory flashes back to the library, the dollhouse, the hidden stairs leading up to the little attic room. Fletch’s room.