DEVOUR ME WHOLE

Sienna pov

The house smelled like roses and money and something rotting underneath both.

That was my first thought when the car pulled through the iron gates of the Blackwood estate — that whoever lived here had worked very hard to make sure everything looked perfect, right down to the flowers lining the driveway, and that the effort itself was a kind of lie.

My second thought was that I should have stayed in the car.

Mom reached over and squeezed my hand. She was glowing — actually glowing, the way people do when they’ve decided to be happy no matter what the evidence says. She’d been like this for six weeks. Ever since Harlan Blackwood proposed on a Tuesday at a restaurant I couldn’t afford to eat at.

“Sienna.” She said my name the way she always does when she wants me to fix my face. “Just try.”

I tried.

The wedding was small. Forty people in the estate’s east garden, fairy lights strung between marble columns, a string quartet playing something I didn’t recognize. Harlan looked pleased with himself in the specific way rich men do when they’ve acquired something new. Mom looked beautiful and young and terrified underneath the happiness, though I was probably the only one who could see that last part.

I stood in the back and drank champagne and told myself this was fine.

It was not fine.

Rex found me first.

He was tall and easy to look at, with the kind of smile that meant he’d been getting away with things since childhood. He handed me a fresh glass without asking and said, “You look like you’re calculating your escape route.”

“I’m just standing here,” I said.

“Sure you are.” He grinned. “I’m Rex. The good-looking one.”

“Rex Blackwood. I know who you are.”

“Then you know I’m harmless.” He clinked his glass against mine. “Welcome to the family, stepsister. Try not to hate us all too fast. Give it at least a week.”

I almost smiled. He was easy the way some people are easy — like he’d been specifically designed to make you lower your guard.

Cole was across the garden, leaning against a column with a book in his hand — who brings a book to a wedding — and when I looked at him he looked back. No smile. Just a slow, measuring look that made me feel like I’d already said something wrong. He nodded once and went back to reading.

Then I saw the man at the top of the stairs.

He wasn’t in the garden with the rest of them. He was standing on the wide stone steps that led up to the main entrance — jacket on, glass in hand, watching the wedding like he was observing something he hadn’t been asked to be part of and didn’t particularly want to attend.

I didn’t know who he was yet. I just knew he was looking at me.

Not at the ceremony. Not at the string quartet. At me.

It wasn’t a flirty look. It wasn’t even an interested look, not exactly. It was the kind of look that takes inventory. Like he was filing away information and deciding what to do with it.

I looked away first. I hated that I looked away first.

The reception moved inside after sunset. I found a corner and a fresh drink and stayed in it, watching everyone else be charmed by the Blackwood estate — the high ceilings, the dark wood, the art on the walls that probably cost more than my old apartment.

At some point Rex appeared at my elbow and said, “That’s Kade. My older brother. Don’t let him spook you — he does this with everyone.”

I followed his gaze. The man from the stairs was at the edge of the room, in a conversation with two men in suits that he clearly wasn’t fully present for, because his eyes moved across the room while they talked.

Landed on me.

Moved away.

Rex said something else but I didn’t hear it.

I needed air. Found my way to the rooftop terrace through a door I probably wasn’t supposed to open. It was cold up there and quiet, and I could see the city lights past the estate walls, and for the first time all night I could actually breathe.

I’d been up there maybe ten minutes before I heard the door open behind me.

I knew before I turned around.

Kade Blackwood didn’t say anything at first. He walked to the railing six feet from me and looked out at the city and drank his whiskey. Up close he was — a lot. Too composed for the middle of his father’s wedding. Too still.

Then he said, “You’ve been watching the exits all night.”

“I’ve been watching the party,” I said.

“No. You’ve been watching the exits.” He didn’t look at me. “I noticed it two hours ago.”

That was a strange thing to admit — that he’d been watching me for two hours. I let it sit there.

“So?” I said finally.

“So nothing.” He turned then, leaned back against the railing. Looked at me straight. “I just want you to know I’m aware of you. And I want you to know — that’s going to be a problem.”

I stared at him. “A problem for who?”

“Both of us.” A pause. “Stay out of my way and we’ll be fine.”

“Funny.” I turned back to the view. “That was going to be my exact advice to you.”

The silence that followed wasn’t comfortable. It was the kind of silence that has weight.

Then he said, quietly enough that I felt it more than heard it: “That’s exactly the problem.”

He walked back inside. I stood there with the city lights and the cold air and a feeling in my chest I didn’t have a name for.

✶

My room was on the third floor. Big, cold, beautiful in the way the whole house was beautiful — like a showroom, not a home.

I pushed the door open and stopped.

My suitcase was on the bed. Unpacked. Every item of clothing folded and put away in the wardrobe, my toiletries arranged on the bathroom counter, my books stacked neatly on the nightstand.

I hadn’t done that.

I walked to the desk. My journal was there — the black one I kept in my bag, the one I’d had for two years, the one I wrote in when things got too loud in my head.

It was open.

To the last entry I’d written. Three weeks ago. The one where I’d written everything I actually thought about this move, this marriage, this family I was being absorbed into.

Someone had been in my room. Someone had unpacked my things and opened my journal and left it right there for me to find.

And the only person in this house who looked like he knew everything about me before I’d said a single word — was Kade Blackwood.