Chapter Twenty-four
Dax leaves me a message. A ‘see you soon’ cop-out.
He’ll be gone for weeks and yet couldn’t bring himself to even say goodbye?
It hurts, though I try to give him the benefit of the doubt after last night.
I understand how guilty he must feel for going against Aiden and forcing me to see those names without warning.
No one knows the lengths people take to keep loved ones safe better than I do, so I get it.
I’d sacrifice the world if it meant saving AJ, TJ, and Casey.
I guess I can add him and Aiden to that list now too.
On the flip side, I’m glad Sylvie’s gone.
Selfish as that sounds, even looking at that girl is hard work.
Not only has she proven herself a liar, but she’s a danger to all of us—herself included.
I don’t know whether that’s because of naivety or deliberate shrewdness.
I’m not willing to risk what it takes to find out.
Aiden places a sweet coffee down in front of me. Sliding into the seat opposite as I watch him get ready to leave me, too.
“Study hard, but don’t forget to chill out.”
“I’ve no idea what that means,” I tease despite it also bearing truth.
He rolls his eyes playfully. “Get some casual reading done, watch movies, listen to music, binge a TV series, go for a walk, go for a swim.”
“There’s a pool?”
“They didn’t show you the pool? I’ll tell Cas to show you the gym facilities. There’s a pool, spa, masseuse, steam rooms…this place is a regular resort.” He laughs, but it lacks his carefree levity.
“I’ll take a look,” I promise. “Though, this is a great time to just buckle down and clear a module. The sooner I get it done, the sooner I can get on my feet.”
Aiden sees right through to the heart of me. “You’re still worried about money?”
“More like, I want to earn my way,” I admit. Aiden nods in understanding. He focuses on my face, staring too long into my eyes as though reading the tenor of my thoughts. Thoughts that spin back to my guilt. “About last night,” I start.
But Aiden raises his hand to stop me. “Don’t worry about it.
I trust you to do whatever you need—whatever you feel is right to keep yourself safe.
I want to ensure that as much as Dax does, I’m just not in the moral position to…
” he trails off. I don’t need him to say it.
Especially not when I’m holding secrets from him.
“Aiden, I get it. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt either.” Truth.
“None of this is fair, Tiger., but if it comes to it, choose yourself first. Every. Damn. Time. Okay?” The desperate way he says it has me wondering if he knows.
Dax took the moral dilemma out of Aiden’s hands and left him with plausible deniability.
The intensity in Aiden’s whiskey-gaze has me suspecting he knows Dax better than to believe he left it alone.
“Okay.”
He sucks in a sharp breath and walks toward the stairs. A backpack is packed and leans against the post waiting. “I’ll call to check in as soon as I can. Go anywhere you’d like within the grounds. Just be sure to tell Cas and don’t leave the compound.”
“Of course.”
“I’m pretty sure Ben will hover around to keep you company if you need it,” he adds, grinning.
“No doubt.” I laugh, knowing he’s probably somewhere listening to everything as we speak.
“Cas’s number is in your phone along with Ben’s. Tom requested yours too, but while he’s outside the compound, I’m reluctant to give it to him. I can’t trust his security.”
“I get it.”
“Right.” He swings the heavy bag onto his back. “I’d better go.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, Dax is going to be off grid. He’ll make contact when he can, but don’t be upset if it takes a while, okay?”
“Okay. Stop worrying. I’m just waiting for your ass to leave so I can get to work,” I joke. He sees my lie for what it is—false bravado.
“Be good, Tiger.”
I don’t move as Aiden marches down the stairs. Nor when the door downstairs creaks open and clicks shut again behind him.
I’m still there twenty minutes later with my stone-cold coffee untouched, wondering what it means that he didn’t kiss me goodbye and beating myself up for not chasing after him to kiss him instead.
Have we fucked this thing between the three of us already? Why does everything feel broken?
Ben pours himself a glass of milk. I didn’t notice his arrival. For all I know, he crawled out of the wall again.
“Thought you were getting your arse to work, Honeybee? Decided to take the day off? Want to come play with me?” The hesitation in his voice tells me he’s not sure if I mind his listening in. Instead, I’m grateful to not be alone.
I ease his conscience and distract myself by playing along a little. “Ben…are you suggesting a playdate or a playdate? I can’t believe you waited until they were gone to make your move.” His pink-tipped ears are enough to make me laugh.
“I think Dax and Aiden would give me more than a black eye if I even suggested—”
“I think you’d be wrong and rather surprised by what they’d be okay with.” I heave a sigh. “You’re right though, I’m not in the mood to work. What do you have in mind? Distract me!”
“Okay, lazy girl, want to see some cool shit?”
“Lead the way.” I smile even though it feels flat on my face.
Fake it ‘til you make it, right? We both know I’m fronting, but I appreciate Ben offering to distract me.
I need it. If the last time I was alone taught me anything, it’s that my brain is hell-bent on shredding me to pieces with flashbacks and regrets.
What-ifs and why-can’ts are not good for a person.
Especially not one who has lost everything.
After waiting for me to ditch my cup in the dishwasher, Ben leads me up the stairs and towards my room.
I raise a questioning brow when he holds my door open for me to go inside ahead of him.
His blush reappears, and he shakes his head.
I laugh again, but I’m a little wary of whatever this is when he closes the door behind us.
“Okay, so you know the mirror leads to your closet and bathroom.”
“As you well know, after cornering me in there.”
“Right, yeah, sorry about that.” I nod for him to continue.
“Well, your room has two more secrets. Ben grabs my hand and pulls me into the bathroom, pointing to a ceiling-to-floor corner cabinet that I’ve never even used.
He pulls at the door. It swings wide with a groan to reveal shelving.
I shrug my shoulders in a ‘so?’ gesture.
Ben grins and closes the door. When he next turns the handle, it is in the opposite direction, and this time he pushes.
The shelves swing forward, only half as deep as they look, thanks to a mirrored backing, revealing another door behind.
“What the hell?”
“Cool, right? Two guesses as to what’s behind here…”
I think about the layout of the rooms and realise it’s roughly where Dax’s bathroom is. “You’re kidding!”
“Nope. Straight into the master suite.” He sweeps his arm wide, inviting me to see for myself. I pop my head in, and sure enough there’s Dax’s bathroom. His corner cabinet is the twin of mine.
“Holy hell. Why would anyone need that? Who used to sleep in my room? The mistress?”
Ben laughs. “Probably. I do know it was once a nursery and became Celeste’s room.”
“How can you be sure?”
“She once told me she used to sneak into her parents’ room through the bathroom as a child. As soon as I saw Dax’s suite, I knew.”
It brings back the night he appeared in my room. I knew he hadn’t come through the main door. “That fucker! That’s how he got in here without me noticing.”
Ben coughs and takes a couple of steps back into my bathroom. “Well, now you know his secret, you can turn it back on him.” He smiles uncomfortably. “Cool though, right?”
“Very. This house is so intricate, like the maze outside.”
I seem to have said the right thing because Ben’s face lights up. “Exactly! Which leads me to the other secret in your room.” He turns and traipses back out to the main room. I close the mirror door behind us.
“The old man was obsessed with puzzles,” he begins. “There are puzzle boxes everywhere in this house. Half of which you’d never realise were even there. Secrets are like currency with the rich, so I’m not surprised that the richest man of them all was obsessed by them.”
“Celeste’s father?”
Ben shakes his head. “No, her great-great-grandfather,” he corrects. “The right honourable, Ephraim Trevainne. Though honourable is debatable considering he won Harrison in a bet with Lord Ernest Harrison.”
“I always thought that was just a thing the tourism people made up to make us seem more interesting?”
“No, it’s 100 percent true. The original bet is framed and hung at City Hall.”
“So, this is the original Harris House? I thought he sold most of the land?”
“This is mostly the old Harris house; Ephraim did a lot of work to it during his lifetime. It was his son Gulliver Trevainne who lost most of the family fortune. Thanks to a loophole, they were able to keep the house and the Heights. His descendants sold off portions of that later to reclaim some of the fortune he’d squandered.
This house was too precious to sell off.
Ephraim built secrets into every aspect of it, and I guess they didn’t want to give that up,” Ben explains, walking along the back wall of my room before stopping.
“Did you know, he hired seven different teams to build this manse so that no one would know all the plans except himself? They say he hired them from foreign lands and far off cities. No two groups spoke the same language. He was that determined to keep his secrets.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t just kill them all instead. There are plenty of examples of that in history.” My comment is a joke, but Ben nods seriously.
“I wouldn’t be surprised, but if he did, no one ever caught him.” I wait for Ben to crack a smile, but it doesn’t come.
“And the other secret?” I ask, taking the story a little more seriously too.
“Right here.” He knocks on the wood panelling beside the bed and taps along until it sounds hollow before pushing. The panel slips inward and slides along on rickety grooves. It’s more of a crawlspace than a door.
“There’s one in my room too,” he explains. “I think my room was originally supposed to be Sylvie’s room, but from what I can work out, she wasn’t here long enough to find the tunnel.” He crouches down to check the opening.
“Wasn’t here?” Why wouldn’t she be here?
Ben twists back to stare at me. “You didn’t know?”
“Know what?”
“After Celeste’s mother died, she left with Sylvie. Moved into…”
Aiden’s apartment. “A loft in the Arts District,” I finish for him.
“Yeah, though it was part of the Vale back then. Not as trendy as it is now. I think that’s why her father began the gentrification project and created the Arts District.
” So, Celeste took her little sister and ran away from her dad?
Familiar story and yet I’m struggling to find any sort of sympathy for her. I’ve more curiosity than anything else.
I nod. “Celeste raised Sylvie there? Why not here?”
“Good question. One I haven’t been able to answer yet.”
“Okay. Wow, complicated.” This discovery feels like a needle under my skin.
An irritation that will bug me until I find out why.
Did Dax know he was getting involved with an heiress back then, or did he assume she was just another girl from the Vale?
Why would her father leave the business to her after she left him? Guilt? Pity? Filial obligation?
Ben grunts in agreement, suggesting I don’t know the half of it. “This whole fucking family and its bullshit is complicated. This tunnel, however, is not. Come on.”
I follow Ben, either bravely or stupidly, through the crawl space and into a corridor, which is actually more of a staircase between the walls. He flicks a switch, and the lights flicker on, showing me it’s far less creepy or dusty than I expected.
“There are four flights of stairs leading straight down. They emerge under the house and lead to a tunnel,” he explains.
“This is how you get to the cottage, isn’t it?”
“Technically, that is how I get to the cottage.” Ben points at a tiny stairway and crawlspace behind us that leads off at a right angle from my entryway. I follow him over and through the gap, my shoulders touching the walls on both sides, and into another bedroom. His.
“I think the cottage was a later addition to the grounds, or Celeste’s parents commandeered it and turned into a playhouse.
When I first found it, there were toys and books everywhere.
I tucked them into the attic and took over the space.
Seemed perfect, especially as it led straight in and out of my room.
Only later did I realise my door was more modern than yours.
So, Celeste’s door must have come first, and later they added one for Sylvie, for when she was big enough to explore. At least, that’s my guess.”
It made sense. A folly of parental indulgence, but that was my envy talking. I could only imagine the wonder of having a place like that to retreat to as a child.
“You can use it too if you ever need to escape for a while,” Ben offers, fussing with the quilt on his bed and kicking clothing into a pile in front of his dresser.
“I mean. I’m always on the move, so you’d have privacy.
It’s so quiet down there you can hear a mouse fart.
” He seems to realise what he’s said before he blushes again. “Right…well.”
“And I can visit you there too, right? When we need somewhere just to chill away from the house and have a chat or whatever?” I ask, offering what he really wants, companionship, friendship, someone to fill that gap left behind by loneliness.
“Yeah, of course. I’d like that.” He holds my gaze for a long, expectant moment and then seems to chicken out of saying whatever has been building in his mind.
“Okay. This way. There’s lots more to see.”