Chapter 2

Lydia walked through the DeLuca estate like she was already wearing my name.

She ran her fingers over the carved banister, admired the portraits of dead men with dead eyes, and smiled at the security cameras like they were fans.

I kept my hands folded, my expression smooth, and my rage buried so deep it became fuel.

“This is beautiful,” she said, pausing in the foyer beneath the chandelier. “I didn’t realize you lived like… this.”

“You’ll get used to it,” I replied.

She glanced at me, lips parting in mock innocence. “It must have been lonely. Living here. While Theobald was out doing… everything.”

I didn’t answer. Silence was a blade, too.

Moira had assigned me this humiliation like it was a job title.

Escort the replacement.

Show her the territory.

Prove, in front of staff and soldiers, that I understood my place.

Lydia drifted into the master suite—my suite—like she’d been invited by the walls. She opened drawers, inspected jewelry boxes, ran her hand across the bedspread.

“I think I’ll have this room,” she said. “It feels right.”

“It was mine,” I corrected, pleasantly.

She laughed. “Was.”

Behind her, the maid kept her eyes down. The guard by the doorway stared straight ahead. Everyone pretended not to hear.

That was the DeLuca way.

Public cruelty. Private denial.

Lydia turned, her gaze sharp. “Theobald told me you were… practical. Not emotional.”

“Did he?” I asked.

“He said you understand this life.” She tilted her head. “So you won’t make things difficult.”

I looked at her belly.

Flat. Barely a hint of anything.

Yet she spoke like she was already crowned.

“You should unpack,” I said. “Dinner is at eight.”

Her eyes lit with triumph, as if she’d won something. “I can’t wait.”

I left her with the staff and went to the one place that still smelled like Theobald’s attention: the cellar lounge.

A private room beneath the estate where men drank and discussed violence in low voices. The kind of place wives weren’t supposed to enter unless they were bringing trays.

I paused at the door when I heard him.

Theobald’s voice, amused. “She thinks she matters because her father sells weapons.”

A laugh answered him—one of his captains. “Doesn’t she? Moreau guns keep half the city armed.”

Theobald scoffed. “Moreau guns come through my ports. Through my men. Without me, her father is just a rich old man with warehouses and no routes.”

My fingers tightened around the edge of the doorway.

“She’s obedient,” Theobald continued. “That’s what I needed. A steady face on my arm, a polite mouth at church, a signature when I told her to sign.”

“Still no kid, though,” the captain muttered.

A pause. Then Theobald’s tone turned colder.

“Not her fault,” he said—too quickly, too practiced. “But it is her failure.”

My stomach clenched.

Lydia’s giggle drifted through the room, faint and intimate. She was with him. Of course she was. Sitting on his knee, sipping his whiskey, hearing him discuss my body like inventory.

I stepped back before they could see me.

Not because I was afraid.

Because I didn’t want Theobald to know what he’d just given me.

Proof.

Not on paper. Not recorded.

But proof in my bones.

He didn’t love me. He didn’t respect me. And he believed the lie that would destroy him—that I was dependent.

I walked up to my old wing, into the smaller room I’d claimed months ago when the marriage began rotting. I opened the locked drawer beneath my desk and pulled out a slim phone with no traceable line.

I dialed a number I hadn’t used in years.

It rang once.

“Eleanore,” my father said, voice like gravel and steel. “Talk.”

“Not yet,” I answered. “But soon.”

A pause. “Is he hurting you?”

I thought of Theobald’s laugh. Lydia’s touch on my bed. Moira’s command.

“Yes,” I said simply.

My father exhaled, slow. “Then you’re ready.”

I didn’t let emotion climb into my throat. “I need a place that isn’t mine. Somewhere they won’t watch.”

“I’ll send keys,” he said. “And people.”

“I don’t need people,” I replied.

A low, approving sound. “That’s my girl.”

After I hung up, I opened a leather notebook and began writing.

Ports.

Routes.

Shell companies.

Captains loyal to money, not blood.

Then I closed the notebook and whispered into the quiet room:

“Let them think I’m obedient.”

Because obedience was the mask I’d use to take their throat.