(Alice's POV)
Hunt's estate lay sleeping like a snake curled, silent, plump, and deadly.
I learned, growing up, to move quietly. To be one with plush darkness. To condition my breathing to be indistinguishable from air. I was, you see, my father's son, the man who had uttered once that the difference between an open and a closed door lay in the will to walk through it.
And tonight, this daughter seemed to be in more demand than ever.
It was only two o'clock. The thick quiet of wealth clung to the corridors like a preserving fluid. Not a sound. No sound of staff footsteps, no clinking glassware, no even muffled whispers of nocturnal confidences. But I had memorised the rhythm of this house, learned its nocturnal heart throbs. I knew which creaked floorboards, which flashed chandeliers, and which walked clear of the hallway cameras.
I waited until I could hear Jermin's final steps recede into silence down the opposite wing. Then I slipped out of my suite. It was more luxurious than anything I had ever resided in, but this was not a very good time in my father's good times—it was more a mausoleum. A gilded cage furnished with silk and secrets.
Barefoot, wearing a lightweight silk robe which didn't help to insulate me from the cold marble floor, the chill bit deep into me, and I wrapped myself in it. Heat tempted you. Warmth invited surrender. And women surrendering in houses like this. Didn't get second chances.
The study was located on the north side, tucked behind the old ballroom. Easy to miss if you do not know what you are looking for. But I had seen the bourbon trays making their way there after dinner. I'd observed how Jermin showed up after midnight, off-kilter but alert. This was his haven.
And this evening, it will be mine.
I halted in the doorway and listened, my ear against the wood. Nothing. The silence of a room is too mature.
I entered it, swiftly as I could. The atmosphere was thick with smoke and leather, like a creaky novel bound in sin. My heart rate remained constant, measured and steady, not because I wasn't afraid, but because I was exactly where I needed to be.
My fingers traced the edge of the mahogany desk. Buffed to madness. Every object—his pen, the bourbon decanter, a lion s-head paperweight made—sat in precise, surgical order. But my eye was not looking for order. It was looking for a break.
And I found it.
Top left drawer. The only one that appeared to have been touched.
Nearly untouched.
But I remembered—months ago—he in the hallway at a family brunch, his mother behind him with her hand on that drawer. Not on it. Just guarding it. Like it held something she was worried he would find.
Or someone else would.
I knelt, fingers quick, and pulled the pin from my hair. My dad had shown me how to pick a lock before he'd ever shown me how to sign a check. "Knowledge is power," he'd said, "but secrets? Secrets are kingdoms."
Click.
The drawer slid open for me like a sigh released.
There was one file.
Thin. Simple. No drama.
Stamped in his mom's precise handwriting: Holloway.
My father's name.
I hesitated long enough to have my heart catch in my chest.
Then I opened it.
Documents that had been scanned inside. Electronic wire transfers. Meeting records, redacted in spots. A typed declaration signed by my father - and a second, in looping, slashing script. Her signature.
The queen's.
My eyes went wavy as I read. The accord. The conflict. Terms. Offshore funds shifted. Power traded out of the open. But one line at the bottom, handwritten in red ink like a blade cutting into the page-left the air evacuating from the room.
If Holloway doesn't smarten up-end it. Quietly.
I picked it up, trying not to make my hands tremble.
Evidence. Not of the killer, not yet. But of motive. Of betrayal. Of a plan my father never foresaw.
I folded the page over to photocopy, racing heart. My robe flew open as I rose to the surface, ready to dissolve back into the shadows.
Then-
"What are you doing, exactly?"
The voice behind me wasn't stern. It didn't have to be.
It was ice dumped directly into my backbone.
I slowly turned, letting my breath catch just so in my throat to appear shaken.
Jermin leaned in the doorway. Shirtless. Barefoot. Cradling a glass of whiskey in fingers too steady for a man who said he slept.
His eyes. They weren't angry.
They were worse than that.
They were curious.
Like a scientist finding something interesting.
I clutched the file against my chest. "I-I couldn't sleep," I breathed. "I came here to think."
He came in, pushing the door shut behind him. The room seemed smaller.
"Right. So late at night?" he asked softly.
"I didn't want to wake anyone," I replied. I tried to place a tremble in my voice-just enough to cross the thin line of innocence and danger.
He came over to me, the faint light casting shadows on his features-below his cheekbones, that starved peace in his eyes. "You miss your father."
It was not a question.
I nodded, biting my lip. "He spoke of people with lovely faces and wicked hearts."
Jermin smiled. "Sounds like he disliked my mother."
"He never spoke her name." I looked down. "But I remember how he was after that last meeting. As though he'd looked into the sun and gone blind."
A flame flashed across his eyes.
He sat up slowly and brushed a tear from my face with the tip of his fingers. The movement was too intimate. Too knowing.
"You cried at the wedding," he breathed. "I thought it was fear. But maybe it was hate."
"Maybe both."
His fingers lingered a moment longer.
And then he moved toward me.
The closest one can come to skin heat is on the silk of a robe. So close, the breath kissed my collarbone. My fists clenched around the file-officially, not with fear, but out of control.
"You would yell," he answered, brushing a lock of hair away from my face. "And I'd come running to you."
"You'd come to silence me," I said.
A cruel smile ghosted across his mouth. "Or maybe I'd come to kiss you."
My insides churned.
His hand drifted from my cheek to the soft curve of my waist, like a secret. And for what may be the scariest, charged moment-
I wish he would.
I wanted to forget about the file. To forget the war, forget everything and drop into that something alive.
But then-
He stopped.
He jerked back as if he had been scalded.
"I don't want to repeat the same mistake two times," he growled, this time in a silent, low voice. "Almost shattered."
"What mistake?" I asked, a whisper barely audible.
"Wanting something that ends in blood."
And then he turned,
Walked away,
Leaving the glass behind like a signature.
I stood there trembling, but not from fear.
More from the almost-forgotten, why I was here.
Almost.
I slid the duplicate of the file into the folds of my robe and crawled backward through my house, my heart pounding-like war drums in my chest.
In my bedroom, I shoved the file underneath the mattress, hands still shaking. Not from cold. From anger.
He had touched me.
And I had come within an inch of letting him.
But next time. I wouldn't just let him. Next time, I'd use it.
Use him.
Like all the Hunts took advantage of every weak point, every weakness.
Even love.
Because this was no longer about survival. It was ab
out winning.
And I didn't come here to become a bride.
I came here to burn the throne.