CHAPTER 4: A YEAR OF SILENCE

By the time the first year ended, I had learned three solid things about Alistair Kensington.

He never apologized. He never slept more than four hours. And he never, ever let anyone else hurt what he considered his.

I learned the fourth thing at a party. His party precisely.

"She's prettier than I heard," a man said behind me. As I stood near a table, just close to him.

I didn't turn. I was holding a tray, again. Only this time the champagne was Kensington champagne and the dress was black silk Alistair had chosen.

Dress code for the staff on nights when his rivals visited. He liked me standing where he could see me.

"Excuse me," I said.

"No… no. Stay." His hand closed around my wrist. "I'm Dante Rossi. And I've been wanting to meet the woman who tamed Alistair."

His fingers were damp and tight. Dante was about thirty-five, heavy-shouldered, with a gold watch and a smile I wanted to scrape off his face.

"Let go." I barked. Just loud enough for him to hear.

"Come on! What do you think you are? A girl like you, in a house like this." He tugged, and I stumbled. He caught me and pulled me into the seat beside him… hard, that my butt hurts and his arm slided around my waist.

"Kensington won't mind sharing, will he? Everyone knows what you are."

"What am I?" I asked. My fist already curled in anger.

"His toy." Dante grinned. "And a toy can be passed around."

I didn't see Alistair cross the room. I only heard the glass table crack.

One second Dante's hand was on my waist. The next it was pinned flat on the table under Alistair's palm. And the room had gone silent in the way I now recognized.

"Say it again," Alistair growled, his eyes filled with deadly rage.

"Alistair, come on, it was a joke—"

"Say it again!"

"Boss!" Marco appeared at his shoulder. "Not here please."

"Here is exactly the place, Marco." Alistair didn't look at him. His eyes were fixed on Dante's face.

"You touched her?"

"I didn't know she was—"

"She's mine." He spoke with perfect calm. "My house. My table. My toy. My name. And she was never yours to put your filthy hands on."

A sound like a dry branch snapped. Dante screamed. Alistair had broken two of his fingers without raising his voice, without even changing expression.

"Get him out," he ordered, his voice dangerously calm.

Two men hauled Dante away, while he wailed. Alistair straightened his cuffs. And the whole ballroom stared. No one talked and no one moved.

"Touch her," he said, to everyone and no one, "and you will die."

Then he took my elbow, not gently…and steered me out of the room.

He didn't speak until we reached the empty hallway outside his study. Then he let go, and I rounded on him.

"You broke his hand." I asked with my eyes wide, staring straight at his face.

"Two fingers."

"In front of two hundred people!"

"Yes."

"Was that for me?" My voice shook. "Or for yourself?"

His jaw tightened. "Don't mistake it for kindness."

"I'm not. And I never will."

"Then just know anything that belongs to me is mine to break." His eyes burned. "Nobody else's."

"Is that supposed to comfort me?"

"It isn't supposed to do anything." He turned away, then back, as if he couldn't help it. "Did he hurt you?"

I looked at my wrist. Red marks, already formed.

"I've had worse from you." I murmured, almost to myself.

It was a cruel thing to say, and I meant it to be. He took it without a flinch, and I wished…stupidly, that he had flinched.

"Go to your room then," he said. "And make sure you ice that."

"Don't tell me what to do with my own body."

"It's my body for two more years," he said.

The words hung between us. We both knew what that meant. We both knew how the last year had gone…his nights, my silence, a thousand small cruelties I paid back in kind.

I had learned to hate him properly. I had also learned his habits. The way he rubbed his temple when he was tired. The way he stood in the doorway at night and watched me sleep, and thought I couldn't tell.

I would not call it softening. I would not call it anything.

"Amarah." He called, his voice landing tender than I expected.

I turned, my hand still on the stair rail.

"Next time a man grabs you," he said, "you scream. Not whisper. Scream!"

"Why? So you can come running?"

"Yes. So I can come running," he agreed.

I turned away and walked up the stairs, I didn't look back, because if I looked back I'd see his face…and I'd see the thing I was most afraid of seeing, which was that he meant it.

Later that night, there was a knock on my door.

I expected Marta. But I found Elise.

She stood in the hallway, wearing a plain gray coat and no makeup.

For a second I didn't recognize her. My stepsister had always been all polish, lipstick and fury. This girl looked like she hadn't slept in a year.

"How did you get in?" I asked.

"The back gate. I know the guard." She stepped inside and shut the door fast. "Amarah, I don't have time. I need to talk to you."

"You've never wanted to talk to me before. Why now?"

"I know." Her hands twisted together. "I'm sorry about that night. About the ring. About—" She swallowed. "I didn't do it because I wanted to."

I went very still. "What does that mean?"

"I can't say it all. I'm being watched. But, Amarah, listen to me." She grabbed my hands. Her fingers were ice. "Someone is using me. Someone has been using me since before Dad died, and I don't know who they are, I only know that they—"

Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

She froze.

"Elise?"

She pulled it out, looked at the screen. And the little color she had left drained away.

"I have to go."

"Wait—"

"Don't trust anyone," she whispered. "Not even—"

The phone buzzed again. She dropped my hands.

"I'm sorry."

She was out the door before I could reach her.

I stood in my small room with cold fingers and a pounding heart.

Someone is using me. Someone had been using her since before my father died.

I sat on the edge of my bed and thought of Vanessa's pearls, of Stephen's kind eyes…and of course, of a man apologizing to his dead brother in the dark.

A year of silence. And somehow…in a single night, the silence had started to crack.

********

The next morning, a mail came early.

I was setting the breakfast table when Marco walked in with a small black box. No stamp. No return address. Just Alistair's name in neat white ink.

"Found it on the front step," Marco said. "All guards swear no one came near. They didn't see who dropped it."

Alistair took it without a word. He sat down, untied the ribbon, and opened the lid.

I was standing close enough to see.

A ring lay inside…heavy gold, with a signet engraved with a small crest. Beside it, a folded card.

Alistair's face went gray.

"Boss?" Marco called.

But he still didn't answer. His hand, the one that had broken Dante's fingers without trembling, shook as he turned the card over. I read it upside down.

Three words, handwritten.

I'm home, brother.

"That's impossible," Alistair said finally. His voice sounded like it had been scraped with a knife. "That ring was on his hand when we buried him."

I stared at the ring, then at him. And the room went very, very quiet.