Three days later. The morning air in Long Island was crisp and sharp, carrying the faint salt tang of the distant ocean.
Cynthia stood alone in the glass greenhouse behind the Bowers estate, surrounded by rows of potted herbs and climbing vines. The heavy, bitter, medicinal scent of crushed roots and dried leaves clung to her stained apron and coated the back of her throat. She worked in silence, her movements steady and practiced as she carefully poured the dark, steaming, almost-black liquid into a ceramic bowl. The final dose of the stabilizing compound—a formula she had spent three sleepless nights perfecting. The only thing keeping Almon tethered to the world.
A sudden, aggressive roar of multiple high-performance car engines shattered the quiet morning like a rock through glass.
Cynthia's hands paused mid-pour. Her brow furrowed. She set the kettle down, picked up the hot bowl gingerly by the rim, and pushed open the greenhouse door with her hip. The cool air hit her flushed face as she crossed the manicured lawn, her worn sneakers leaving dark prints in the dew-soaked grass. She stepped into the long, shadowed hallway of the main house just as chaos erupted at the front entrance.
Barnaby, the elderly butler who had served the Bowers family for four decades, came sprinting past her with a speed that belied his years. His face was flushed a deep, alarming crimson, sweat beading on his bald pate and rolling down his temples. His starched collar was soaked through.
"The Church family!" he gasped, clutching at the wall for support, his chest heaving. "The matriarch herself! She's here! In the living room!"
Cynthia stopped at the edge of the hallway, pressing her body into the shadows behind a massive marble pillar. She peered around the corner into the grand living room.
Over a dozen men in identical black suits stood like stone sentinels around the perimeter, their hands clasped in front of them, their faces blank and hard. The room bristled with their presence. In the center, enthroned on the plush velvet sofa like a queen receiving tribute, sat Eleonora Church. She was tiny and ancient and radiated more pure authority than anyone in the room combined. Mountains of expensive gift boxes—Tiffany blue, Hermès orange, glossy black—were piled on the Persian rug around her feet like offerings at an altar.
Inger was practically vibrating with naked, unbridled greed. She hovered over Eleonora like a vulture, holding out a silver tea tray with a cup of Earl Grey, her face stretched into a smile so desperate and sickening it looked physically painful. Her hands were trembling with the effort of maintaining her composure.
Standing off to the side, removed from the circus, was Dominic.
He wore a perfectly tailored black suit that emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the long, lean line of his legs. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets, his posture radiating a bone-deep boredom. His face was a mask of pure, freezing indifference—the expression of a man who would rather be anywhere else on earth.
Eleonora waved away Inger's tea without even looking at it. She reached into her crocodile-skin designer bag and slammed the broken silver bracelet onto the glass coffee table with a decisive clatter.
"Who in the Bowers family purchased this specific bracelet?" Eleonora demanded, her voice ringing through the cavernous room with the clarity of a bell. "It is a limited edition, serial number 007. Do not waste my time with lies."
Soft footsteps padded down the grand staircase. Celia, Cynthia's cousin, descended into the living room wearing a pale pink silk nightgown, her blonde hair tousled from sleep, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand like a drowsy child.
She glanced at the coffee table and gasped—a sharp, theatrical intake of breath. "Oh my god! That's mine! I just bought that last week at that little boutique in SoHo!"
Eleonora shot up from the sofa with the energy of a woman half her age. She grabbed Celia's hands in both of hers, her eyes glistening with sudden, overwhelming tears. "My savior! It's you! You are the one who saved my grandson!"
Celia blinked rapidly, her mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. She was completely bewildered by the sudden, intense physical contact from this terrifyingly powerful old woman whose name was spoken in whispers in every social circle that mattered. "S... savior?"
Dominic narrowed his eyes. His gaze swept over Celia with the cold, methodical precision of a security scanner. He catalogued everything—the messy, salon-blonde hair, the sleep-creased face, the weak chin, the soft line of her jaw, the way she flinched at sudden movements.
No. His brain rejected it instantly, viscerally, before conscious thought could catch up. The woman on the train had a jawline carved from ice. She moved with lethal, coiled precision. She had looked at him—him, Dominic Church—with eyes that held absolutely no fear. This girl looked like she would burst into tears if she broke a fingernail.
Standing in the shadows of the hallway, Cynthia saw the bracelet glinting on the coffee table. Her stomach dropped like a stone into cold water. She understood exactly what was happening—the chain of events that had led this circus to her doorstep. A cold, mocking smirk touched the corner of her lips, there and gone in an instant.
Inger finally processed the word savior and the staggering implications of the Church family showing up at her house with mountains of gifts. Her eyes went wide, then wider—the pupils dilating with manic, euphoric greed. She lunged forward and grabbed Celia by the shoulders with both hands, her fingernails digging into the silk nightgown, and shoved her forcefully toward Dominic.
"Yes! My Celia is so brave! So kind-hearted! So selfless!" Inger gushed, her voice pitching up into a shrill, near-hysterical register. "She is an angel! A guardian angel sent from heaven! She's always been special—always!"
Dominic looked at Inger with undisguised, withering disgust—the way one might look at a cockroach that had crawled onto the dinner table. He turned his head a fraction of an inch, giving Leo a subtle, almost imperceptible hand signal. Get the checkbook. Pay these people off and get me out of here.
"The Church Group is prepared to offer the Bowers family a highly lucrative development contract," Dominic said, each word flat and cold as a stone dropped into still water. "As compensation for your... assistance on the train."
Eleonora slammed her hand down on Dominic's forearm with a sharp, reprimanding smack. "No! Absolutely not! We are not paying them off like servants!" Her voice rose, filling the room. "The Church family is here to announce a formal engagement to Celia Bowers!"
Several maids in the background gasped audibly. One of them dropped a tray. Inger looked like she was going to pass out from sheer, unadulterated ecstasy—her face went slack, her eyes rolling back slightly, her hand fluttering to her chest.
Celia peeked up through her lashes at Dominic's devastatingly handsome face—the chiseled jaw, the cold dark eyes, the mouth set in a hard line. A deep, crimson blush crept up her neck and flooded her cheeks. She ducked her head, letting her tousled hair fall forward to hide her face, playing the role of the shy, overwhelmed bride-to-be with surprising competence.
Dominic's fists clenched at his sides so hard his knuckles cracked audibly. A thick muscle feathered along his jawline, pulsing with barely contained fury. His grandmother had ambushed him. Again.
In the hallway, Cynthia watched the entire spectacle with detached, clinical boredom. The shrill voices, the fake tears, the mountain of gifts—it was a circus, and she wanted no part of it. Getting tangled up with a paranoid billionaire with dead eyes and a god complex was the absolute last thing she needed while trying to keep her uncle alive under Inger's roof.
She adjusted her grip on the hot ceramic bowl and turned on her heel, intending to slip away unnoticed toward Almon's room.
As she pivoted, the frayed hem of her oversized sweater caught the edge of a tall brass plant stand. The metal shrieked against the marble floor—a sharp, high-pitched, nails-on-chalkboard screech that cut through the chatter like a fire alarm.
Dominic's head snapped toward the dark hallway with the instantaneous, predatory focus of a wolf catching a scent.
Through the gloom, past the marble pillars and the velvet drapes, he caught a split-second glimpse of a woman's back. She wore a faded, oversized sweater that swallowed her frame. Her dark hair was pulled up in a messy knot. Her posture was rigid, her shoulders set in a straight, uncompromising, unapologetic line.
A sudden, inexplicable surge of deep irritation and intense, prickling wariness seized his chest like a fist closing around his heart. Something about that silhouette—the angle of those shoulders, the defiant tilt of that head—sent a jolt of recognition through his nervous system that his conscious mind couldn't explain. It felt like something uncontrollable and dangerous had just breached the edge of his meticulously guarded awareness.
His eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. He stared at the empty hallway long after she had vanished from sight.
