Chapter 3

The New York Independent was based in a crumbling office building in Lower Manhattan, the kind of place you walked past without noticing unless you knew what to look for. I had spent four years here before I gave it all up for Damian. Four years of chasing leads, interviewing sources, staying up all night to meet deadlines. Four years of being good at something that mattered.

Margaret met me at the entrance. She was older now—grey streaked her dark hair, and there were lines around her eyes that hadn't been there before—but her handshake was the same. Firm. No-nonsense. The handshake of a woman who had spent thirty years in journalism and had no patience for anything less than the truth.

"You look terrible," she said.

"I haven't been sleeping."

"I can tell." She led me through the newsroom, past rows of empty desks—it was still early, the skeleton crew of overnight reporters just finishing their shifts—and into her office. A stack of files was already waiting on her desk. "I pulled everything we have on the Ashfords. It's not much. They're very, very good at keeping their names out of the papers."

"Has anyone ever tried to investigate them?"

"A few reporters over the years. One of them left the business. Another moved to the West Coast. The third—" She hesitated.

"The third what?"

"The third was found in the river. The coroner ruled it an accident. Everyone knew it wasn't."

I stared at the files. The innocuous manila folders, the neatly typed labels. Inside was information that had gotten at least one person killed.

"And you're still letting me do this?"

"You're not just any reporter, Rory. You're the best I ever trained. And if anyone can figure out what the Ashfords are hiding, it's you." She slid a key across the desk. "Archives are in the basement. Take as long as you need. And Rory—be careful. Please."

"I will."

I spent the next six hours in the basement. The Ashford files were thin but telling. Financial records. Property transfers. Police reports that had been buried before they could become investigations. The Moretti files were thicker—they were less careful than the Ashfords, less disciplined. There were references to a peace treaty, to a summit between the families, to a marriage that had ended decades of bloodshed.

And then I found it. A single photograph, buried in a file marked "Miscellaneous." It was dated seven years ago. A wedding. Damian, younger and sharper, in a tuxedo that fit him like armor. And beside him, a woman I had never seen before. Dark hair. Pale skin. Eyes that looked like they had already seen too much.

Celeste Ashford.

I stared at the photograph for a long time. She was beautiful. Not the kind of beautiful that came from makeup and lighting. The kind of beautiful that was carved into bone. And she looked—what? Resigned. Unhappy. Like a woman who had already accepted that her life was not her own.

I slipped the photograph into my bag. Then I kept digging.

By the time I left the archives, it was dark outside. I had a bag full of files and a notebook full of questions. I walked to the subway, my mind racing, trying to piece together the fragments I had uncovered. The Ashford empire was vast. The peace treaty was fragile. And somewhere in the middle of it all was a woman who had been forced to marry a stranger to end a war.

I needed to meet her.

The Ashford estate was in a part of Long Island that didn't appear on tourist maps. Rolling lawns. Iron gates. A long driveway lined with ancient oaks. The house itself was a grey stone mansion, all gables and turrets and windows that looked like they had been designed to keep secrets in, not let light out.

I didn't call ahead. I didn't announce myself. I just drove up to the gate and told the guard my name.

"Rory Sinclair. I'm here to see Mrs. Ashford."

The guard looked at me for a long time. Then he picked up a phone and murmured something I couldn't hear. A minute later, the gate swung open.

"Go straight up the driveway," he said. "Someone will meet you at the door."

The someone was a woman in a grey dress who looked like she might have been a secretary or a housekeeper or something in between. She led me through the mansion—through rooms filled with antique furniture and heavy drapes and the particular, suffocating silence of a house that had never been a home—and out into a garden in the back.

Celeste Ashford was sitting in a gazebo, surrounded by roses. She was more beautiful than her photograph. Dark hair pulled back in a simple twist. Pale skin that looked like it had never seen sun. And eyes—very dark, very still—that fixed on me the moment I stepped into the garden.

"You're her," she said. Her voice was soft. Unhurried. "The one he keeps in the city."

"I'm Rory."

"I know who you are." She gestured to the chair across from her. "Sit. You've come a long way."

I sat. There was tea on the table between us, and small cakes, and a vase of fresh-cut roses. It looked like a scene from a painting. Two women taking tea in a garden. Civilized. Elegant. Utterly removed from the reality of what was happening between us.

"Seven years," Celeste said. "That's how long he's been hiding you from me. Or hiding me from you. I'm not sure which anymore." She took a sip of tea. "You know, I've always wondered what you looked like. He never keeps photographs of you—too dangerous, he says. But I've imagined you a thousand times. Taller. Shorter. Prettier. Plainer. The woman my husband loves more than he has ever loved me."

"Does he love you at all?"

She laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. "Love? No. He doesn't love me. He never has. But he protects me. He keeps me safe. He gives me everything I could possibly want—except freedom." She set her teacup down with a small, precise click. "Do you know what it's like to be a prisoner in a house like this? To know that every guard at every gate is there not to keep people out, but to keep you in?"

I thought about the photographs in Damian's box. The gun. The things he had done that I would never know about.

"I think I'm starting to understand."

"No. You don't." Her voice was still soft, but there was something underneath it now. Something sharp. "You have his love. You have his nights and his weekends and his whispered promises. You have a life outside these walls. I have been here for seven years. I was brought here the night of my wedding. Packed into a car and driven through those gates and told that this was my home now. That I would never leave."

"Never?"

"Not unless Damian decides otherwise. Which he won't. Because as long as I'm here, the treaty holds. The Morettis can't attack as long as their daughter is in the Ashford house. I'm not a wife. I'm an insurance policy." She looked at me, her dark eyes unreadable. "Do you know what he told me the night we were married? He said, 'I have someone else. I will always have someone else. But I will never hurt you, and I will never let anyone else hurt you. That's the best I can do.'"

I closed my eyes. Of course he had told her. Of course he had been honest with her. She was a hostage, not a lover. He owed her the truth the same way he owed me lies.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I want you to understand what you're dealing with." Celeste leaned forward. "Damian Ashford is not a bad man. That's the worst part. He's a good man who does terrible things because he believes he has no choice. He tells himself he's protecting everyone—me, you, his family, his men. But he's not protecting anyone. He's just keeping us all in cages of different sizes."

"What do you want from me?"

"I want you to help me get out." Her voice was barely a whisper now. "I've been waiting seven years for someone to come through those gates who wasn't afraid of him. You're not afraid of him, are you, Rory?"

I thought about it. "No. I'm not afraid of him. I'm afraid of what I'll become if I stay."

"Then we want the same thing."

The garden was silent. The roses swayed in the breeze. Somewhere inside the mansion, a phone was ringing.

"There's someone you should meet," Celeste said. "Her name is Irena Rossi. Her husband used to work for Damian's father. He was killed ten years ago—executed, they said, for betraying the family. Irena knows things about the Ashfords that no one else knows. If you want to bring Damian down, she's the place to start."

"Bring him down?"

"Isn't that why you're here?" She met my eyes. "You didn't come to this house just to meet me. You came because you want to know what you're up against. Because you're building a case. Because you're a journalist, and you've finally found a story worth telling."

I stared at her. "How do you know I'm a journalist?"

"Because I've been waiting for you for seven years. I've read every article you ever wrote. I know where you went to school, where you worked, why you left. I know more about you than Damian does, because unlike him, I've been paying attention." She stood up. "Irena will meet you at the Café Voltaire on Bleecker Street. Tomorrow at noon. She'll find you."

"And what do you get out of this?"

"Freedom." She smiled, and for the first time, there was something like hope in her eyes. "If the Ashfords fall, the treaty is void. And if the treaty is void, I'm no longer valuable. I can go home. I can see my brothers. I can have a life." She paused. "And you can have yours. The one you should have had before Damian took it from you."

That evening, Damian came home early.

I hadn't expected him. He was supposed to be at a meeting with his lieutenants, something about the docks—he'd mentioned it in passing that morning. But when I walked through the door, he was already there. Sitting in the dark living room. Waiting.

"Rory." His voice was low. Controlled. "Come here."

I set down my bag. My heart was pounding, but I kept my face calm. "What's wrong?"

"I got a call today. From the estate." He stood up. Walked toward me. "The guards at the gate told me something interesting. They said a woman came to visit my wife. A woman named Rory Sinclair."

He stopped inches from me. His hand came up, not to strike me—he would never strike me—but to rest against the wall beside my head, caging me between his body and the plaster.

"You went to see Celeste." It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I wanted to know who she was. Because you've been hiding her from me for seven years. Because I deserved to see her face."

His jaw tightened. His free hand came up, and for a moment I thought he might touch me—my throat, my face, some gesture of possession or warning. But he just rested his fingers against the wall on the other side of my head, trapping me completely.

"Don't go there again." His voice was very soft. Very dangerous. "Not because I'm angry. Because the men who guard that house are not my men. They're the old guard. My father's people. They don't like you, Rory. They think you're a threat to the treaty. If they decide you're a problem, they'll act before I can stop them."

"Then stop them."

"I'm trying." For the first time, his voice cracked. "I've been trying for ten years. To keep you safe. To keep you separate from all of this. To make sure no one in my world ever touched you." He leaned closer, his forehead almost touching mine. His breath was warm against my lips. "You are the only thing in my life that has ever been good. The only thing that has ever been clean. If I lost you—"

He didn't finish. He didn't have to.

"If you lost me," I said quietly, "what would you do?"

He pulled back just enough to look at me. His dark eyes were unreadable, but his voice, when it came, was barely a whisper.

"I would burn everything down. Everyone who hurt you. Everyone who threatened you. Everyone who made you leave." He paused. "Including myself."

I stared at him. This man who loved me. This man who caged me. This man who would destroy the world to protect me—and had already destroyed parts of me to keep me.

"I'm not going anywhere," I said. It was the truth. For now.

He kissed me. Harder than he'd ever kissed me before. Desperate. Possessive. Like he was trying to press the lie back into my skin.

I let him. Because I didn't know what else to do. Because I loved him and I hated him and I didn't know where one feeling ended and the other began.

That night, after he fell asleep, I lay awake and thought about what Celeste had said. He's a good man who does terrible things because he believes he has no choice. She was right. That was the worst part. He was a good man who had been taught, since the day he was born, that love meant ownership. That protection meant control. That the only way to keep someone safe was to lock them in a cage so beautiful they never realized it was a cage at all.

And I had been living in that cage for ten years without ever seeing the bars.