Friday Night in Helen's Field — Hugo's Estate

Arabella Cavendish lay sprawled across her bed, breathing as though every breath might be her last.

Her chest rose and fell in short, uneven bursts. Sweat gathered along her hairline, trickled down her temples, and disappeared into her hair. The sheets beneath her were a mess of twisted fabric and darkening blood, and every time she moved, even slightly, a sharp, vicious pain tore through her body.

She had never been particularly fond of the idea of dying. It was such an inconvenient thing to happen to a person, especially one who still had several matters to attend to.

Yet here she was, lying in her own bedroom, bleeding from a bullet wound and discovering that the human body had a rather dramatic way of protesting when someone tried to put a hole through it.

She wasn't entirely sure what she was supposed to feel. Fear, perhaps. Panic. The sudden urge to reconsider all the terrible decisions she had made in her life.

Her mind, however, seemed determined to offer her only one question.

Who the fuck shot me?

Her body had more immediate concerns. Adrenaline surged through her bloodstream, keeping her conscious despite the pain and the blood she had already lost. Her heart hammered against her ribs, working furiously to sustain a body that seemed increasingly determined to give up on her.

Beside the bed stood Lady Garter, armed with a bottle of wine, a pair of tweezers, and a level of medical confidence that would have been considerably more reassuring had it been accompanied by an actual medical qualification.

She leaned over Arabella, squinting at the wound.

"Hold still."

Arabella turned her head slowly and regarded her.

"Of course. Let me just inform the bullet that it's hurting me and ask it to behave."

"Don't be clever. I'm trying to help you."

"Then I suggest you start doing a better job of it."

Lady Garter ignored her and returned to her work.

She had spent enough evenings watching medical dramas to develop the impression that treating a bullet wound was a matter of locating the offending object, removing it, applying a few stitches, and waiting for the patient to make a miraculous recovery. The doctors on television always seemed to know exactly where to cut, which instruments to use, and how to maintain a perfectly composed expression while doing it.

Unfortunately, television had neglected to mention that there was a considerable difference between watching a surgeon work and becoming one after a few glasses of wine.

Lady Garter had no formal training in medicine, nursing, or anything remotely related to keeping another human being alive. What she possessed instead was a collection of half-remembered scenes, a questionable pair of hands, and a determination that was rapidly becoming indistinguishable from recklessness.

She lowered her face closer to the wound.

"Oh, dear."

Arabella closed her eyes.

"Those are not the words I want to hear from someone holding tweezers over an open wound."

"I can't see properly."

"Have you considered opening your eyes?"

"I mean the bullet, Arabella!"

"Well, I certainly haven't swallowed it."

Lady Garter shot her an irritated look before returning to the task. She pressed a cloth against the wound, attempting to control the bleeding, then adjusted her grip on the tweezers.

Arabella's fingers curled into the sheets.

"Now, this might hurt a little."

A little.

The words had barely left Lady Garter's mouth when she began probing the wound.

Arabella's back arched off the mattress.

"AH—FUCK!"

Her scream tore through the bedroom, followed by a strangled gasp as she clamped her teeth together. The pain arrived with such brutal intensity that, for a moment, the room seemed to tilt around her. Her fingers dug into the sheets, bunching the fabric beneath her palms, while her legs tensed involuntarily.

Lady Garter froze.

"Are you all right?"

Arabella stared at her.

There were several possible responses to that question, but most involved language that would have made a sailor reconsider his profession.

"Do I look all right to you?"

"No need to be rude. I'm doing my best."

"Your best is going to kill me."

"Well, your manners certainly won't save you."

With that, Lady Garter resumed her work.

It was difficult to determine which was more alarming: the amount of blood soaking into the sheets or the expression of concentration on Lady Garter's face. She had the look of a woman attempting to assemble a complicated piece of furniture without instructions, except that the furniture in question was screaming at her.

She shifted the tweezers, searching for a better angle.

Arabella's breath caught in her throat.

"Wait—wait, don't—"

Lady Garter pulled.

Blood suddenly welled from the wound, spilling over her fingers before splattering across her face. A red droplet landed on the tip of her nose. Another struck her cheek. For one brief, dreadful second, neither woman moved.

Lady Garter blinked.

Arabella blinked back.

Then Lady Garter slowly wiped the blood from her cheek with the back of her hand.

"Oh, goodness."

Arabella looked at the blood on the sheets, then at Lady Garter's face.

"Did you get it?"

Lady Garter raised the tweezers.

A small, bloodied bullet gleamed between their tips.

"Here it is."

Arabella released a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. The relief lasted approximately two seconds before another wave of pain rolled through her body.

"Wonderful," she whispered through clenched teeth. "Perhaps we can now proceed to the part where you stop trying to murder me."

Lady Garter placed the bullet on a nearby tray.

"I know what I was doing."

"Naturally. And I am the Queen of England."

Lady Garter reached for the wine bottle on the bedside table.

She needed a drink.

In fact, she needed several drinks, preferably enough to erase the memory of what she had just done. She poured herself a generous glass and swallowed a mouthful, then another, allowing the wine to settle the trembling in her hands.

Arabella watched her.

"Are you drinking my wine?"

"Our wine," Lady Garter corrected.

"How touching. I've been shot, and you're celebrating."

"I'm not celebrating. I'm recovering from the ordeal."

"You're recovering? You're not the one with a hole in her body!"

Lady Garter took another sip.

"Would you like some?"

"No."

The answer came quickly, almost violently.

Arabella had no desire to add alcohol to the unpleasant collection of sensations currently occupying her body. Besides, she had more pressing concerns than the contents of a wine bottle.

Someone had shot her.

Someone had put a bullet into her body, and she had absolutely no idea why.

Her thoughts began circling the question, each possibility giving birth to another. Had she been followed? Had someone been waiting for her? Was the shooting deliberate, or had she simply been unfortunate enough to find herself in the wrong place at the wrong time?

The last possibility was particularly offensive.

Arabella Cavendish had never considered herself a woman who attracted misfortune. Other people suffered from bad luck. Other people made foolish decisions and paid for them. She preferred to believe that she was the one arranging the misfortune, not lying helplessly in bed while someone else decided whether she would live or die.

Who the hell was it?

She tried to recall the moments before the shooting, searching her memory for anything that might explain what had happened. A face. A voice. A movement in the darkness. Anything.

But every time she attempted to concentrate, the pain dragged her attention back to her body.

A sharp breath escaped her as she shifted against the mattress.

"Stop moving," Lady Garter instructed, setting down her glass.

"I'm not moving for the pleasure of it."

"Then stop doing it for the displeasure of it."

Arabella turned her head towards the ceiling and silently reconsidered every friendship she had ever maintained.

Unfortunately, she couldn't afford to dismiss Lady Garter just yet. As questionable as her medical abilities were, she was the only person in the room attempting to keep Arabella alive.

And there was another problem.

Hugo.

Her father knew nothing about what had happened to her. More importantly, he had no idea that his daughter was currently lying in bed with a bullet wound, a blood-soaked mattress, and a woman who had acquired her medical knowledge primarily from fictional television doctors.

Arabella intended to keep it that way.

Hugo had explicitly told her to keep herself safe. She could already imagine the expression on his face if he discovered that she had somehow managed to get herself shot. His questions would be relentless, his anger unbearable, and his concern—if he chose to express it that way—an entirely separate nuisance.

No. He couldn't know.

Not yet.

The party would have to be postponed, of course. She would need a convincing excuse, something sufficiently urgent to discourage questions without inviting too many of them.

An illness, perhaps. An unexpected complication. Some unavoidable matter that required her absence.

She could think of a dozen plausible reasons.

The difficulty was that she needed to survive long enough to use one of them.

Lady Garter, apparently satisfied that the bullet had been removed, began preparing to close the wound. She gathered her supplies and examined the injured flesh with the grim determination of someone who had finally reached the part of a television episode where the surgeon sewed the patient back together.

Arabella noticed the needle.

Her eyes narrowed.

"Absolutely not."

Lady Garter looked up. "What now?"

"Tell me you're not about to put that thing into me."

"How else do you expect me to close the wound?"

"I don't know. Perhaps we could invite a qualified doctor to the estate. I've heard they're rather good at this sort of thing."

"And explain what happened to you?"

Arabella fell silent.

There it was.

The sensible suggestion, ruined by the inconvenience of its consequences.

Lady Garter gave her a pointed look. "Exactly."

Then she threaded the needle.

Arabella stared at it with the same expression she might have reserved for a loaded gun.

"You have no idea what you're doing."

"I've stitched things before."

"What things?"

Lady Garter hesitated.

Arabella's heart sank.

"What things, Lady Garter?"

"Dolls."

For several seconds, the room was silent.

Then Arabella slowly turned her head towards her.

"Dolls."

"Yes."

"My wound is being treated by a woman whose medical experience consists of stitching dolls."

"They were very good stitches!"

"I am not a doll!"

"No, but you do have a terrible habit of tearing things apart."

Arabella opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Unfortunately, Lady Garter had a point.

When Arabella was younger, she had possessed a particularly destructive relationship with her toys. Her dolls had suffered terribly at the hands of a child

who seemed to regard their little fabric bodies as an invitation to experiment with scissors, needles, and the occasional act of wanton violence. Lady Garter had spent countless afternoons repairing the damage, stitching torn limbs and reattaching heads while Arabella watched with varying degrees of boredom and satisfaction.

Apparently, those afternoons had been preparing Lady Garter for this moment.

God help them both.

"Just do it," Arabella muttered, gripping the sheets again. "And if you leave a scar, I'll make certain you regret it."

Lady Garter leaned over her.

"You should be thanking me."

"I'll consider it when I can sit up without wanting to die."

The first stitch went in.

Arabella's entire body stiffened.

She sucked in a breath so sharply that it caught halfway down her throat. The needle pierced her skin, drawing the wound together with a sensation that was somehow different from the pain of the bullet itself—smaller, sharper, and horribly deliberate.

The second stitch was worse.

By the third, Arabella had abandoned any pretence of dignity. Her hand twisted in the sheets, her jaw clenched so tightly that the muscles beneath her cheekbones began to ache. Sweat ran down the side of her face. Each breath came through her nose in short, controlled bursts, as though she could discipline her body into refusing to react.

It didn't work.

A broken sound escaped her when Lady Garter pulled the thread taut.

"Sorry, darling."

"Stop apologising and start being competent!"

"I'm trying!"

"Try harder!"

Lady Garter took a breath, steadied her hands, and continued.

Outside the bedroom, the estate remained undisturbed. The distant sounds of the night carried on as though nothing had happened: the faint rustling of leaves, the occasional call of an unseen creature, the soft whisper of wind against the windows. Somewhere beyond these walls, the world was continuing with its ordinary business.

Inside, Arabella Cavendish was fighting to remain conscious while a woman with no medical qualifications attempted to sew her back together.

There was something almost insulting about it.

She had survived the shooting. She had survived the extraction of the bullet. Surely the universe could show a little mercy and allow her to survive the stitches without further humiliation.

But mercy, Arabella was discovering, had a rather poor sense of timing.

Lady Garter finished another stitch and reached for her wine.

Arabella watched her take a drink.

"You're going to finish that entire bottle, aren't you?"

Lady Garter swallowed.

"Probably."

"Wonderful. At least one of us is enjoying Friday night."

Saturday Morning

They had spent the entire night enjoying each other's company—or whatever one wished to call the activities that had kept them occupied until the early hours of the morning. By Saturday morning, their bodies had grown considerably more familiar with one another, and the awkwardness that might have existed between two people in their circumstances had given way to a certain ease.

Sunlight filtered through the curtains, spilling across the bed in pale golden streaks. The sheets lay tangled around their legs, carrying the warmth of a night neither seemed particularly eager to forget. The air held that lingering intimacy of two people who had spent hours in each other's arms, with just enough mischief in the atmosphere to suggest that sleep hadn't been their only occupation.

Raymond lay beside Lucille, one arm loosely wrapped around her. She rested against his side, looking unusually comfortable for a woman whose usual line of work involved tracking down people and killing them for a living.

As Raymond shifted, his gaze wandered across the scars scattered over her body. Some were thin, silvery lines that had faded with time, while others were more pronounced, the skin around them bearing the memory of injuries that had healed less kindly. Each seemed to tell a story of a bounty, a mission, or an encounter that had nearly gone wrong.

Lucille's body was practically a collection of red flags.

Raymond, however, appeared to have mistaken them for decorative features.

He didn't ask about the scars. Perhaps he didn't want to know what had caused them, or perhaps he simply wasn't the sort of man who felt compelled to investigate every questionable detail about a woman lying in his bed. Considering that she had knocked him unconscious the previous day, he already had enough information to make a sensible decision about keeping his distance.

Naturally, he ignored it.

There was something rather remarkable about the human capacity to overlook danger when it came wrapped in an attractive package. Raymond seemed to be demonstrating that principle with admirable dedication.

Lucille shifted closer, tightening her arm around him. Her fingers rested against his chest as she tilted her face towards his.

"I want to be more than friends," she said.

Raymond looked down at her.

For a moment, he seemed to consider the proposition with the same calm deliberation he might have given a business arrangement.

"You can be my assistant. I don't have one."

He kissed her forehead.

Lucille blinked.

An assistant?

She had just expressed an interest in becoming something more intimate than a friend, and Raymond had responded by offering her a position in his professional life. It was difficult to determine whether he was deliberately avoiding the subject or had somehow managed to misunderstand it entirely.

She tightened her arms around him anyway.

"I'm sorry about knocking you out yesterday," she murmured, pressing herself closer to him. "I was a bit pissed."

Raymond glanced at her.

"A bit?"

"All right, very pissed."

"That's reassuring."

She hugged him more tightly, apparently hoping that affection might compensate for the inconvenience of having rendered him unconscious.

Raymond allowed her to hold him for a moment before sitting upright against the headboard. The sheets slipped down as he straightened, and he drew a breath, his expression becoming a little more serious.

"But I just think you're a bit much," he said. "You shouldn't go around punching people. You need to behave like a normal person."

Lucille's embrace loosened.

For a moment, she simply stared at him, as though she were waiting for him to explain how he had arrived at such a conclusion while lying in bed with her.

Then she withdrew her arms and sat up.

"Then go find someone who's less much."

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached for her clothes.

The change in her demeanour was immediate. The warmth that had softened her expression moments earlier disappeared, replaced by the familiar irritation of a woman who had little patience for being told what to do. She dressed without looking at him, her movements brisk and increasingly impatient.

Raymond watched her in silence.

He hadn't expected her to agree with everything he said, but he hadn't expected her to abandon the conversation quite so quickly, either.

Lucille pulled on the rest of her clothes and adjusted them, keeping her back towards him.

For several seconds, neither spoke.

Then Lucille turned to face him.

"I think we should get to know each other more," she said. "Connect emotionally and romantically."

Raymond raised his eyebrows.

"You mean a date?"

"Yes, yes! I mean a date. Let's go out together. We can take walks and get to know each other better," Lucille said.

Raymond considered the suggestion for a moment before giving her a small smile.

"That sounds like a nice way to spend my day."

Lucille's face brightened. Whatever irritation had seized her moments earlier seemed to evaporate, replaced by the enthusiasm of someone who had just received exactly the answer she wanted.

"I want you to touch my anxiety the whole day," she declared.

Raymond stared at her.

"My what?"

"My anxiety!" she repeated, walking towards him.

Before he could ask what that was supposed to mean, she stepped between his knees and wrapped her arms around his head, pulling him into an affectionate embrace. Raymond, still sitting on the bed, rested his hands against her waist while she held him close.

"I really like you," he said, his voice quieter now. "But if this doesn't work out, I never want to see or talk to you again."

Lucille drew back just enough to look at him.

There was something almost amusing about the way he had delivered such a serious warning while sitting half-dressed on a bed with the very woman he was supposedly prepared to abandon forever. Raymond seemed determined to establish the terms and conditions of their relationship before they had even managed to go on their first date.

"It will work out," she assured him. "Trust me."

That was a rather bold promise from a woman who had knocked him unconscious less than a day earlier, but Lucille appeared perfectly confident in her ability to make it happen.

Unfortunately, their tender moment was interrupted.

The bedroom door opened.

Alex stood in the doorway.

Her gaze travelled from Raymond, sitting on the bed, to Lucille, who had her arms wrapped around his head. She remained perfectly still for a moment, taking in the scene before her.

Raymond noticed her first.

He leaned to his left, trying to get a better look past Lucille.

Then his eyes met Alex's.

Oh.

Lucille turned around to see what had caught his attention.

Alex said nothing.

Instead, she lifted her hand and placed two fingers against her forehead, closing her eyes briefly in a gesture that Raymond recognised all too well. It was the same little sign he used whenever he wanted to apologise without having to say the words aloud.

Raymond watched her, his expression caught somewhere between embarrassment and resignation.

Alex lowered her hand.

Then she closed the door.

The click of the latch sounded remarkably final.

For a moment, silence settled over the bedroom.

Raymond and Lucille looked at the closed door.

Then they looked at each other.

Neither appeared particularly interested in discussing what had just happened.

Whatever Alex had thought she had walked in on, she had apparently decided that it was better left undisturbed.

Lucille turned back towards Raymond, slipping her arms around him again as though the interruption had been nothing more than an inconvenient knock at the door.

Raymond leaned forward, resting his nose against her stomach.

"Such an erotic smell you have," he murmured.

Lucille ran her fingers through his hair, smiling down at him.

"I know. It's because of that thing between your legs, honey."

Raymond lifted his head to look at her.

"That makes me want to pin you against the wall."

"Aww, how nice." Her smile widened, apparently delighted by the prospect.

"You are a work of art," Raymond added.

"Your flattery is making me think the shower would be the best place to fool around," Lucille replied.

Raymond rose from the bed.

"I agree." With that, Lucille took his hand and led him towards the bathroom, leaving the closed bedroom door—and whatever Alex might have been thinking on the other side of it—behind them.

DizzyDean's Office

DizzyDean's body remained slumped in his chair, an unsettling reminder of how abruptly a man's day could come to an end. His office, which had presumably been a place for ordinary business before the day's events, had become an impromptu counting room for two men who seemed considerably more interested in the contents of his gym than in the deceased owner himself.

Carl and Cobb sat at the table, surrounded by piles of gold coins they had recovered from the gym and the area behind it. The metallic pieces caught the light whenever Carl moved them, producing a soft, irregular clinking that filled the otherwise quiet office. Every so often, a coin slipped from his fingers and struck the tabletop with a sharp ting, rolling briefly before settling against its neighbours.

Carl was thoroughly enjoying himself.

He picked up another handful, separated the coins into smaller stacks, and counted them with the concentration of a man who had discovered that crime could, under the right circumstances, be a surprisingly profitable line of work.

The longer they counted, the more apparent it became that something about their discovery was unusual.

There were too many coins.

Not merely a few extra pieces that could be dismissed as a counting error, but enough to suggest that DizzyDean had possessed a considerably larger collection than the one they had originally been sent to recover.

Carl paused, glanced at the growing piles, and let out a low whistle.

"It's a miracle he didn't disturb the coins."

Cobb continued counting, barely looking up.

"Maybe he did. He just had too many."

Carl considered that possibility, then resumed sorting the coins. It was a reasonable explanation, though neither man seemed particularly interested in investigating it further. They had been looking for stolen gold, and they had found more than they expected. Whatever DizzyDean had been doing with the additional coins was a mystery they could leave for someone else to solve.

After all, a mystery was only a problem when it prevented you from getting paid.

"It doesn't really matter," Cobb remarked, brushing a few coins into a neater pile. "As long as we got more than we were looking for."

He leaned back slightly and surveyed their collection with quiet satisfaction. The task had turned out better than expected, and for once, there was little reason to complain about the outcome.

Carl, meanwhile, had begun considering the personal benefits of their success.

"I'll take a few for my own pleasure," he announced. "And a medal for good work."

Cobb's hands continued moving over the coins.

He gave no indication that he had heard a word.

Carl glanced at him.

"You heard me."

Cobb picked up another coin, examined it briefly, and placed it on the pile.

The silence was magnificent.

It was the sort of silence that suggested a man had heard everything but had no intention of encouraging the conversation. Cobb had perfected the technique over time, particularly when dealing with Carl, whose ability to turn almost any situation into an opportunity for personal amusement was matched only by his confidence that somebody else would eventually have to deal with the consequences.

Carl waited a moment longer before shrugging.

"Fine. Keep pretending you can't hear me."

He returned to counting, apparently willing to interpret Cobb's silence as permission, provided nobody made the mistake of explicitly granting it.

The coins continued to accumulate between them.

For a while, the two men worked without speaking, their attention fixed on the task.

The piles grew taller, and the table became increasingly crowded with gold. Behind them, DizzyDean remained motionless in his chair, entirely excluded from the discussion about what would happen to the fortune discovered on his premises.

Eventually, Cobb rubbed his hands together and looked towards Carl.

"We'll go to Hugo on Monday. I want to rest."

Carl immediately raised his head.

"Does that mean partying with me again?"

Cobb stared at him.

"I mean literally lay down and rest for the whole day before we're sent on another mission."

"Oh."

Carl sounded almost disappointed.

He reached for the bottle of wine beside him and took a leisurely sip, allowing the drink to linger in his mouth before swallowing. The bottle had been sitting within easy reach throughout their counting, and he appeared to regard it as a perfectly reasonable companion for the occasion.

Cobb shook his head.

"One day, Carl. That's all I'm asking for. One day without running around after stolen property, dealing with troublesome people, or being sent somewhere else to clean up another mess."

"You're talking as though we've been working for months without a break."

"Sometimes it feels that way."

Carl gave a dismissive wave of his hand.

"This Doyley doesn't need rest."

He lifted the bottle and took another sip, looking entirely pleased with himself.

Cobb regarded him for a moment, then returned his attention to the gold.

There were few things more exhausting than a man who mistook his inability to recognise fatigue for proof that fatigue did not exist.

Still, Cobb had worked with Carl long enough to understand that arguing with him rarely accomplished anything useful. Carl would either turn the disagreement into a joke or behave as though he had won simply because he had been the last person to speak.

So Cobb let the matter go.

Monday would come soon enough, and with it, their meeting with Hugo. Until then, he intended to enjoy the rare luxury of having no immediate mission to attend to.

Carl, on the other hand, appeared perfectly content to spend the remainder of the evening counting gold, drinking wine, partying and congratulating himself on a job well done.

Between the two of them, it was difficult to say which man had the better idea of how to spend a day off.

Saturday Night

Seventh Avenue, Edenus

Saturday night had dressed Seventh Avenue in its finest collection of lights and shadows. Streetlamps cast golden pools of light across the pavements, while illuminated shop windows spilled colour onto the streets. Cars passed at irregular intervals, their headlights sweeping across buildings and pedestrians before disappearing into the distance. Somewhere nearby, music drifted out of an open doorway, mingling with the murmur of conversations and the occasional burst of laughter from people enjoying their evening.

Edenus had a different personality at night. The day's hurried movements seemed to soften beneath the streetlights, leaving behind a city that felt almost romantic, provided one ignored the traffic, the occasional impatient driver, and the people who seemed determined to walk directly into everyone else's path.

Lucille and Raymond strolled along the avenue together, taking their time as though neither had anywhere particularly important to be. For once, there were no missions to discuss, no troublesome people to deal with, and no immediate reason to turn an ordinary evening into a matter of life and death.

They were simply two people enjoying each other's company.

Raymond glanced at Lucille before his attention wandered towards a shop window displaying an assortment of jewellery.

"I like chokers," he remarked. "I'm sure one would suit you."

Lucille turned to look at him.

Her eyes met his, and a smile gradually spread across her face. There was something almost girlish about the expression, a sudden brightness that made her look like someone discovering the beauty of the night sky for the very first time. It was the sort of wonder one might feel beneath a sky filled with glittering stars, watching a meteor streak across the darkness and briefly illuminate the world.

For a moment, she seemed to forget everything else around her.

Raymond noticed.

He had seen Lucille angry, impulsive, affectionate, and dangerous. He had already learned that the woman could turn a disagreement into a physical confrontation with alarming efficiency. Yet there were moments when she displayed a softer side, one that seemed almost startling in its sincerity.

Apparently, discussing jewellery was enough to bring it out.

Raymond's smile grew a little more mischievous.

"It would be even more interesting if it had your name on it," he continued. "Wouldn't that make you a little submissive?"

Lucille's eyebrows rose.

"Would it?"

"Well, wearing something around your neck with someone else's name on it does make a statement."

She looked at him for a moment, apparently considering the suggestion. Then she smiled again, this time with a hint of mischief in her eyes.

"It would," she admitted. "But I could only do it for you. Only you."

Raymond stopped walking.

Before Lucille could ask what he was doing, he reached for her waist and pulled her closer. She let out a small laugh as the distance between them disappeared, her hands settling against his chest while the lights of Seventh Avenue glowed behind them.

He looked down at her with an expression that suggested he had just discovered something particularly entertaining.

"Dangerously adorable," he murmured.

Lucille's smile softened.

For a moment, she simply looked at him, her fingers curling slightly into the fabric of his shirt. There was something in her expression that went beyond flirtation, something more vulnerable than the playful remarks she had been making all evening.

"You know," she began, "you're the first person in my life who likes me for being me."

Raymond's expression changed subtly.

"You haven't seen all of me yet," she continued. "But you're getting there."

The admission lingered between them.

For someone who made a living through bounties and dangerous missions, Lucille seemed surprisingly willing to reveal that being accepted mattered to her. Perhaps she was accustomed to people valuing her usefulness, fearing her temper, or judging her by the things she had done. Perhaps she had grown tired of having to become someone else to keep people around.

Whatever the reason, she was looking at Raymond as though his willingness to accept her had become something precious.

Raymond studied her face.

"I wonder how dark you can get," he said.

There was no obvious fear in his voice, only curiosity. If anything, he sounded as though he were contemplating an intriguing mystery and wondering how far it might be worth following.

Lucille tilted her head.

"It's best to move step by step into the darkness, love."

Raymond chuckled.

"Remind me to bite your neck whenever you get sassy."

Lucille burst into laughter.

"Oh, really?"

"Really."

"And here I thought you were a gentleman."

"I have my moments."

"Clearly, they're very rare."

He tightened his arm around her waist, and she leaned against him, still laughing. Raymond lowered his head towards hers, wearing the satisfied expression of a man who had successfully provoked exactly the reaction he wanted.

Their laughter mingled with the sounds of the avenue, rising briefly above the distant traffic before fading into the night.

They continued walking, sometimes talking, sometimes falling into comfortable silence. The streetlights stretched ahead of them in a golden line, illuminating the pavement beneath their feet. Shop windows reflected their passing figures, and the cool night air brushed against their faces.

For a little while, the world seemed remarkably simple.

There was something peaceful about walking beside another person without needing to explain every silence or fill every moment with conversation. Lucille occasionally glanced at Raymond, as though checking that he was still there, and each time she found him beside her, her smile returned.

Raymond, for his part, seemed content to let the evening unfold at its own pace.

Whatever darkness Lucille was hiding, whatever dangers followed her through the life she had chosen, they could wait for another day.

Tonight, Seventh Avenue belonged to the streetlights, the quiet breeze, and two people who were slowly discovering that they might enjoy getting lost in each other's company.

-------

A few hours later, they had returned to Kingsmere, where they found themselves sitting on the rooftop of the Sosadium Building.

The night air was cool against their skin, a welcome relief from the heat that had lingered throughout the day. A gentle breeze swept across the rooftop, stirring Lucille's hair and carrying the distant sounds of the city towards them. Far below, Kingsmere glittered beneath the darkness, its streets traced by headlights and streetlamps, its buildings standing like enormous shadows against the night sky.

From that height, the city seemed almost peaceful.

Raymond sat beside Lucille, one arm resting casually on his knee. Every now and then, he turned his head to look at her, only to discover that the view beside him was considerably more distracting than the one stretching across the city.

Lucille had a bottle of wine in her hand, and judging by the collection of empty bottles around them, she had been making rather enthusiastic use of the evening.

She took another sip before turning towards him.

"Please tell me you can't eat, sleep, walk, talk, or breathe without me."

Raymond glanced at her, amusement settling into his expression.

"I can never eat, sleep, talk, or breathe without you."

Lucille burst into laughter.

It was the sort of laughter that made her lean forward, her shoulders shaking as she tried to recover. She brought the bottle to her lips again, taking another drink while Raymond watched her with the patient expression of a man who had already realised that reasoning with a drunk woman was a task best approached with caution.

"You forgot walking," she pointed out.

Raymond shook his head.

"You're pretty much drunk."

"I'm not."

"Of course not."

"I'm perfectly fine."

She said this with the confidence of someone whose definition of perfectly fine had become rather flexible over the course of the evening.

Raymond looked at the bottle in her hand, then at the other bottles scattered around them.

"Your argument is very convincing."

Lucille ignored him.

Instead, she shifted closer, studying his face with an expression that suggested she had suddenly remembered something terribly important.

"What type of gun do you love?"

Raymond blinked.

Of all the questions she could have asked him, that was not the one he had expected.

He considered it briefly before answering.

"I've always had a Parabellum."

Lucille went completely still.

The laughter disappeared from her face so abruptly that Raymond noticed the change before he understood it.

She stared at him.

For a moment, the only movement between them was the breeze stirring her hair. Her fingers tightened around the neck of the wine bottle, and something dark began to settle behind her eyes.

Raymond frowned slightly.

"Lucille?"

She opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

She tried again, but the words seemed to have become trapped somewhere between her thoughts and her tongue. Her expression twisted, her breathing grew heavier, and her eyes burned with an anger so sudden that Raymond instinctively straightened.

Then Lucille roared.

The sound tore through the rooftop, startling enough that Raymond flinched before he could stop himself.

She hurled the wine bottle against the ground.

CRASH!

Glass exploded across the concrete, scattering in every direction. The sharp report echoed between the surrounding buildings, followed by the liquid pattering against the rooftop.

Raymond stared at her.

He had seen Lucille angry before. He had witnessed her temper, her impulsiveness, and her remarkable ability to turn a relatively ordinary situation into something that required immediate reconsideration.

But this was different.

There was no teasing smile, no playful complaint, no hint of the woman who had been laughing beside him only moments earlier.

She looked furious.

And Raymond, who had apparently spent the evening forgetting that Lucille's profession involved killing people, was beginning to remember that particular detail.

Still, he kept his voice calm.

"What's wrong?"

Lucille turned towards him, her lips parting as though she intended to give him an answer.

Again, nothing came.

She looked away, shaking her head violently. Her hands trembled at her sides, and she seemed to be fighting an argument that existed entirely inside her own mind.

The problem, of course, was that Raymond had said Parabellum.

But in Lucille's increasingly intoxicated mind, the word had somehow become Arabella.

And that single misunderstanding had managed to accomplish what hours of conversation, affection, and flirtation had not.

It had ruined her evening.

Arabella Cavendish.

The name was enough to make Lucille's stomach twist. She had been enjoying herself, believing that Raymond was beginning to see her differently, that perhaps she was becoming someone special to him. She had even allowed herself to imagine a future in which she wouldn't have to compete with anyone for his attention.

Now, in her mind, Raymond had just confessed to possessing a gun named after another woman.

A woman who, as far as Lucille was concerned, had absolutely no business occupying any space in Raymond's life.

"Can you please give me some space?" she demanded at last. "Just a little space."

Raymond studied her for a moment.

He could have argued. He could have demanded an explanation for the sudden outburst, or reminded her that she had been the one asking questions.

Instead, he nodded.

"All right."

He rose from his seat and brushed his hands against his trousers.

Before leaving, he glanced at her once more, perhaps hoping she might change her mind or offer some explanation for what had happened.

Lucille gave him neither.

So Raymond walked towards the rooftop entrance and disappeared through the door.

The door closed behind him with a quiet click.

And just like that, Lucille was alone.

Or at least, she should have been.

Unfortunately, the empty wine bottles had remained behind, scattered around her like the audience at a very depressing performance. The wind moved between them, occasionally rolling one bottle against another with a hollow clink.

Lucille stared at the place where Raymond had been sitting.

Then she began talking.

"Cheating on me with Arabella," she muttered.

Her voice sounded small at first, almost disbelieving.

"Fucking Arabella."

She picked up another bottle and examined it without really seeing it.

"She's not worth your time."

Her expression hardened.

What had Arabella done for him? What did she possess that Lucille didn't? Why should Raymond look towards another woman when Lucille was right there, willing to give him everything he wanted?

She had offered him affection. She had offered him her time. She had even entertained the ridiculous idea of going on a proper date, taking walks, and getting to know each other as though they were an ordinary couple with ordinary problems.

And now this.

Lucille let out a bitter laugh.

"I would be better if it were just me and you."

She tightened her fingers around the bottle.

"Just me and you, Mike. My Mike. My Raymond. Mike."

The names tumbled from her mouth, confused and possessive, as though repeating them might somehow make the man she wanted belong to her completely.

She rose unsteadily to her feet.

The rooftop seemed to sway beneath her, or perhaps it was the alcohol making the world behave strangely. She took a few steps towards the edge, her shoes scraping against the concrete.

The wind caught her clothes and pushed at her body, tugging lightly at her hair.

Below her, Kingsmere stretched into the darkness.

The height was considerable.

The pavement far beneath her looked almost unreal, and the moving cars resembled tiny lights sliding along thin ribbons of road. The distant sounds of the city reached her in faint, indistinct waves.

Lucille looked down.

For a moment, she seemed almost detached from the world around her, staring at the distance as though it contained an answer she had been searching for all her life.

Then her expression changed again.

"I should kill her for good," she whispered.

Her fingers curled into fists.

"Then we'll run away."

She imagined it easily enough. No Arabella. No other women. No one to steal Raymond's attention or make Lucille question whether she was enough. Just the two of them, somewhere far away, where nobody could interfere with what they had.

A perfect little world.

All she needed to do was remove the person standing in the way.

The thought settled into her mind with frightening ease.

Lucille remained near the edge, the wind brushing against her as she stared down at the sleeping city.

And somewhere inside her intoxicated mind, a decision was beginning to take shape.

Sunday Morning

Raymond woke up and turned his head towards the other side of the bed.

Empty.

He stared at the space beside him for a moment, his mind still struggling to catch up with the morning. The sheets were undisturbed enough to suggest that he had spent the night alone, and there was no sign of Lucille anywhere in the room.

However, there was a bottle of wine sitting beside his bed.

A small note had been attached to it.

THANKS, BOYFRIEND.

Raymond picked up the bottle and examined the note, a faint smile appearing on his face.

"Boyfriend, huh?"

He set the bottle down.

It seemed that their friendship had finally crossed into relationship territory, bringing with it a collection of tensions, complications, and dangers that Raymond had probably been better off avoiding. Then again, the man had a remarkable talent for walking towards trouble while convincing himself that he was merely taking a pleasant stroll.

Lucille was a killer, after all. A woman whose professional life involved bounties and dangerous missions, whose temper could turn an ordinary disagreement into a physical confrontation, and who had recently demonstrated that jealousy could make her behave rather unpredictably.

Yet Raymond had somehow found himself in a relationship with her.

Perhaps love really did make people blind.

Or perhaps Raymond simply needed glasses.

A knock sounded at the door.

"Come in," he called.

The door opened, and Alex stepped into the room carrying a tray of cereal.

Raymond looked at her, then at the tray.

He blinked.

Alex had knocked.

That alone was remarkable enough to deserve documentation. It had been ages since she had bothered to announce her presence before entering his room, and the fact that she had done so while carrying food suggested that something unusual was happening.

Raymond glanced at the cereal again.

"Why are you bringing me that?"

Alex looked at him with an expression that suggested she was already regretting the entire exercise.

"It wasn't for you. It was for your wife, but she doesn't seem to be here."

Raymond's eyebrows rose.

"My wife?"

Alex gave him a flat look.

"Would you prefer that I call her your girlfriend?"

"Either sounds fine to me."

"Wonderful. Then you can eat her cereal."

Raymond held out his hands towards the tray.

"Well, you might as well give it to me."

"I will not be doing that."

He stared at her.

"Alex, it doesn't hurt to be kind once in a while."

"I'll leave it on the fucking floor."

And that was precisely what she did.

Alex bent down, placed the tray on the floor, straightened up, and walked towards the door without another word.

Raymond watched her leave.

The door closed.

He remained still for a moment, processing what had just happened.

Then he shook his head.

"Why do I feel like I'm attracting women like Alex into my life?"

It was a reasonable question.

Between Lucille, whose affection came with a concerning assortment of dangers, and Alex, whose idea of delivering breakfast involved placing it on the floor in protest, Raymond was beginning to suspect that he had somehow offended the universe and was now being punished through the women it sent his way.

He climbed out of bed, retrieved the tray, and carried it back to the mattress.

The cereal was still perfectly edible, despite having briefly occupied the floor. Raymond settled against the headboard and began eating, apparently deciding that there were worse things in life than receiving breakfast from a woman who seemed to regard basic kindness as a personal attack.

He finished his meal.

Then, perhaps because the morning had offered him no compelling reason to remain awake, he lay back against the pillows.

Ten minutes later, Raymond was asleep.

Not resting.

Not dozing.

Asleep.

The kind of sleep that suggested his body had finally found an opportunity to collect the hours of rest his life had been denying it.

The tray sat on the blanket beside him, the empty bowl tilted against his knee.

The door opened.

Alex entered the room and approached the bed.

She looked down at Raymond, who remained blissfully unaware of her presence.

"Raymond."

Nothing.

She leaned closer.

"Raymond."

He didn't move.

Alex's expression hardened.

She slapped him.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Four.

Raymond's head rolled to one side with each blow and flopped back onto the pillow, his mouth slightly open, his breathing slow and deep. He didn't flinch. He didn't even frown.

Alex studied him for a moment, then pinched his cheek and tugged it for good measure.

Nothing.

"Good," she muttered. "Completely useless."

It was the sort of test only a sister could consider reasonable. If he had been faking, he would have jumped up and complained by the second slap. Raymond had never once been able to take a slap in silence.

She lifted the empty bowl from the blanket, glanced at it, and set it down on the bedside table. For half a second, something that might have been guilt crossed her face. It was gone before it could settle.

"Sleep well, brother," she murmured.

Raymond had no part in what she was about to do, and she intended to keep it that way. His hands would stay clean. If Hugo was going to die, it would be on hers alone.

She had already arranged the rest. She would go in with three men hired by her and Max, and not a single person from the family beyond herself.

Alex had wanted to take the Kingsbat members with her, but she had reconsidered. They were built for stealth and assassination, not the kind of operation she was preparing to undertake.

Kingsbat specialised in getting into places without being noticed, eliminating targets

efficiently, and disappearing before anyone understood what had happened.

This mission, however, demanded something different.

Alex wanted violence.

She wanted overwhelming force, brutality, and enough noise to ensure that nobody within the vicinity could continue sleeping peacefully while the operation unfolded.

In other words, she wanted precisely the opposite of what Kingsbat was designed to provide.

I need men who can handle a fight without worrying about keeping the entire place silent.

She took one last look at her sleeping brother, then walked out and shut the door behind her.

Sunday was supposed to be a day of rest.

For Raymond, at least, it would be.

Two Hours Later — 9:00 A.M.

Helen's Field, En Route to Hugo's Estate

By nine o'clock that morning, the team had reached Helen's Field and was making its way towards Hugo's estate.

They had come with a purpose, a plan, and the confidence of people who believed they knew what awaited them at their destination.

Unfortunately, their information was already outdated.

The original plan had been built around Arabella Cavendish's scheduled appearance at the party. The expectation was that several guards would accompany her into the woods, leaving the estate with fewer men to defend it. With those guards away, Alex and her team would have a better chance of getting inside, reaching Hugo, and completing their mission before anyone could mount an effective response.

It was a reasonable plan.

There was only one problem.

Arabella had been shot.

While Alex had been preparing her team for the operation, Arabella had been lying in her bedroom, enduring the questionable medical expertise of Lady Garter. Her injury had forced her to abandon the party, meaning the guards who were supposed to accompany her into the woods had never left the estate.

And so, without anyone on Alex's team knowing it, the entire foundation of their plan had collapsed.

The family's delivery van was their way in. The company had delivered to Hugo's clients for years, and the men at his gate knew its logo as well as they knew their own faces. Nobody searches the van that always turns up.

The van rolled along the road towards Hugo's property, bordered by patches of grass and scattered trees. Alex drove, with the leader of her three hired men beside her and the other two in the back among a stack of sealed crates. The morning sun had begun warming the landscape, but there was little comfort in the brightness of the day. Every mile brought them closer to an estate they believed would be vulnerable.

They were wrong.

Hugo's estate was not merely a house surrounded by a fence. It was a fortress, protected by armed guards and built to discourage precisely the sort of visit Alex intended to make. Men were stationed around the property, weapons at the ready, their presence transforming the grounds into a place where an intruder could quickly find himself outnumbered and outmatched.

And they had no idea.

The three men that Alex and Max had hired rode with her, their leader beside her in the front seat, bringing the team's total strength to four. On paper, four determined people might have sounded sufficient for a confrontation, particularly if their opponents were caught unprepared.



The Front Gate

Hugo's Estate

The family's delivery van slowed as it approached the estate's outer gate.

A guard stepped out of the booth and raised one hand. Two more waited by the fence with rifles slung across their chests, watching the road with the bored vigilance of men who had been told to expect nothing and were prepared to be disappointed.

Alex lowered the window and held out a clipboard.

"Delivery for the estate," she said. "Party supplies. Your people ordered them last week."

The guard looked at the company logo painted on the door, then at the manifest. The logo was a familiar one. Hugo's gold had passed through that company's hands more than once, and the men at his gate had learned long ago to wave its vans through without a second glance.

"Thought you lot were coming earlier."

"Traffic."

He grunted and walked around to the back. The doors opened, and two men in work jackets looked back at him from between a stack of sealed crates. The guard rapped his knuckles against the nearest one. It sounded perfectly solid, which was exactly the point.

Alex watched him in the mirror, quietly pleased with herself.

*He suspects nothing.*

As far as she knew, the party they were supposedly delivering for was still going ahead.

Beneath those crates, in the compartment built for much more valuable cargo, lay everything the tunnel would need.

The doors slammed shut. The guard returned to her window.

"Service entrance is round the east side. Don't wander off, and don't touch anything that isn't on your list."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Alex replied.

The gate swung open.

The van rolled forward, and for the first time that morning, Alex felt a small flicker of unease. There were more men on the grounds than there should have been. Far more. They stood along the fence, walked the edges of the lawn, and lingered by the doors of the house, every one of them armed.

It didn't match the plan.

But the gate was already closing behind them, and turning back now would be a great deal more suspicious than carrying on.

At the east entrance, she parked the van and stepped down with her clipboard.

"Take the crates to the service corridor," she told the leader of the three men quietly. "Wait for me by the passage. I'll find someone to sign for them."

He nodded, and the three of them began unloading.

Alex walked into the house with the look of a woman who was only trying to finish her shift.

Inside, Alex was wandering alone through the hallways, clipboard in hand and looking like someone hunting for a signature, when she noticed a woman dressed as a housekeeper.

The woman was carrying herself with the quiet, unremarkable manner of someone who belonged there. Her clothes were plain, her appearance modest, and there was nothing about her that should have drawn anyone's attention. In a house full of servants, she was precisely the sort of person people looked past without a second thought.

Except Alex noticed her.

The woman noticed Alex, too.

Their eyes met briefly.

For a moment, Alex felt a faint stir of suspicion. Something about the encounter made her want to look twice, to stop the woman and ask what she was doing there. But the thought never developed into anything certain. She had a mission to complete, and the last thing she needed was to waste time interrogating a housekeeper because of a feeling she couldn't explain.

Besides, the woman had already passed her.

Alex continued down the hallway.

She didn't know that the housekeeper was Lucille. She had seen the woman, but not long enough to recognise her with any certainty. By the time she might have reconsidered the encounter, Lucille was already elsewhere in the estate, leaving Alex to proceed with a mission that had begun to unravel before she even reached its destination.

The three men were waiting where she had told them to be, at the entrance to the tunnel leading to Hugo's office.

The three guards who had been stationed outside were dead.

Their bodies lay half hidden behind the crates, where they had been dragged out of sight. There had been no shouting and no alarm. Alex's men had used suppressed pistols and a few quiet seconds, while she wandered the corridors and kept the household's attention on a delivery driver looking for a signature.

Alex stopped when she saw them.

Her gaze moved from one body to the next, taking in the scene without a visible change in expression. Then she looked at the leader of the three men.

"Any trouble?"

"None," he said, wiping his hands on a rag. "They never got the chance to call it in. The entrance is clear."

Alex nodded once. The quiet part of the morning had gone exactly as planned. The noise would come later.

She turned towards the three men.

"One of you is going inside," she said.

The man nearest her glanced at the tunnel. Its darkness swallowed the light from the hallway, leaving only a narrow stretch of floor visible before everything disappeared into blackness.

"What am I doing in there?" he asked.

"Plant the explosives along the passage. Check whether Hugo is in his office. Once you've confirmed it, get out."

"And if he's there?"

Alex looked at him.

"Then you'll have done your job."

The man held her gaze for a second longer than necessary. Perhaps he was waiting for her to explain what would happen afterward. Perhaps he had finally begun to understand why Alex and Max had hired him for this particular operation.

Alex offered no further explanation.

He checked his equipment and entered the tunnel.

The darkness swallowed him almost immediately.

He moved carefully, placing the explosives along the passage as he advanced, doing his best to keep his movements quiet. Every small sound seemed magnified underground: the faint scuff of his shoes, the rustle of his clothing, the occasional click of equipment against the wall.

He paused whenever he thought he heard something ahead.

Nothing.

He continued.

The tunnel stretched deeper into the estate, separating him from Alex and the two men waiting behind him. The air was cool and stale, carrying the earthy smell of stone and enclosed spaces. He couldn't see much beyond the reach of his light, and the knowledge that he was moving farther away from the exit made him increasingly aware of how little control he had over the situation.

Still, he pressed on.

One section at a time, he worked his way towards the deeper part of the passage, occasionally looking back to make sure he could still see the faint glow from behind him. Eventually, the tunnel opened towards Hugo's office.

The man slowed.

He had reached his destination.

Carefully, he peered inside.

Hugo was there.

The man withdrew before he could draw attention to himself. He checked the explosives he had placed, then reached for his communication device.

"Alex," he whispered into the microphone. "I'm inside. Hugo is here."

Outside, Alex stood near the entrance with the other two men.

She heard his report clearly.

For a brief moment, she looked towards the tunnel.

Then she pressed the trigger.

"Goodbye," Alex said.

The explosion tore through the passage.

A tremendous roar erupted from underground, followed by a violent shudder that travelled through the surrounding structure. Dust burst from the tunnel entrance. The floor trembled beneath Alex's feet, and the sound rolled through the estate like thunder trapped inside a building.

For an instant, everything became noise and flying debris.

Then came the silence between the echoes.

The tunnel had collapsed, burying the man who had entered it beneath the wreckage, along with the explosives and anyone caught in their path. Somewhere beyond the destroyed passage lay Hugo's office.

Alex didn't wait to discover what remained of it.

She turned towards the two men beside her.

They had barely begun to react when she raised her weapon.

The first man stared at her, confusion flashing across his face. He seemed unable to reconcile the explosion behind him with the woman standing in front of him. He had entered the estate expecting a mission. Whatever he had expected, it clearly hadn't been this.

"Alex, what the—"

The gunshot cut him off.

He dropped.

The second man barely had time to move before Alex fired again.

He fell beside his companion.

Two bodies lay at her feet. Three men had accompanied her into the estate. One was buried somewhere beneath the collapsed tunnel, and the other two would never leave the building.

Alex stood alone.

For a moment, she looked at the men she had just killed. There was no speech, no explanation, and no dramatic declaration about the necessity of betrayal. She had brought them there, used them to reach her target, and disposed of them once they were no longer useful.

Whatever justification she had given herself, the result remained the same.

She had murdered her own men.

Then she turned away and began moving through the estate.

The explosion had done more than destroy the tunnel. It had announced her presence to everyone within earshot.

Shouts erupted from the adjoining corridors.

Boots hammered against the floors. Doors swung open as armed men rushed from rooms and passageways, trying to determine where the blast had originated and whether their employer was still alive. Some hurried towards the ruined tunnel; others spread through the building, weapons raised and fingers close to their triggers.

"Check the lower passage!"

"Find out what happened!"

"Watch the corridors!"

The orders overlapped, each voice attempting to impose some kind of order on the confusion.

But beneath the shouting lay a simpler instruction, one that needed no repetition.

Find the intruders.

And shoot first.

Questions could wait until afterward. Anyone who looked suspicious, anyone caught where they shouldn't be, anyone who failed to explain themselves quickly enough might be treated as an enemy. The guards had lost three of their own, an explosion had torn through the estate, and they had no intention of allowing whoever was responsible to walk away.

And Alex was no longer inside.

Five Minutes Before the Explosion

Hugo's Estate — Arabella's Bedroom

Lucille slipped into Arabella's bedroom with the ease of someone who had spent years learning how to enter places without being noticed.

She had changed out of her housekeeper's clothes, but the quietness of her movements remained. Her eyes swept across the room, taking in the furniture, the half-open curtains, and the woman lying in bed with a bullet wound that had already earned her an unfortunate amount of attention.

Arabella was awake.

She simply wasn't expecting company.

Lucille approached the bed, a small syringe between her fingers. Inside it was a paralysis-inducing substance she had prepared for precisely this sort of occasion. She had no intention of allowing Arabella to scream, fight, or call for help. Not yet.

Arabella's eyes moved towards her.

Before she could make sense of the unfamiliar face, Lucille administered the injection.

Arabella flinched.

"What—"

Her voice faltered as the substance began to take effect. She tried to move her arm, but it barely responded. Her fingers twitched against the sheets, and a strange heaviness spread through her limbs. She attempted to sit up, only to discover that her body had become an uncooperative prison.

Lucille watched her struggle with an expression that might almost have passed for amusement.

Almost.

"You will enjoy this," she whispered, leaning closer to Arabella's face. "Suffer for touching what's not yours."

There was something terribly intimate about the way she said it, as though she were sharing a private joke with someone who had no choice but to listen.

"Don't worry, it won't kill you," Lucille continued, her voice soft and almost kind. "It simply switches off everything that lets you move or speak. Your arms, your legs, your tongue. All of it."

Arabella's eyes widened.

"Your mind will stay perfectly clear, though. You'll hear everything and understand everything. And your nerves will keep working," she added, tapping the bandaged wound lightly with one fingertip. "Every ache, every stitch, every little twinge, you'll feel it all, and you won't be able to so much as flinch. This will be the most painful thirty minutes of your life."

Arabella tried to scream.

Nothing came out but a thin, breathless rasp.

"After that, the feeling will start to come back. Fingers first, then the rest of you. You'll be weak and slow for a while, but you'll recover." Lucille smiled. "Pity."

Arabella tried to speak again.

Nothing useful emerged.

Her eyes widened. She attempted to turn her head, but even that small movement had become difficult. Whatever Lucille had given her was working far more quickly than she could have hoped to resist.

Lucille straightened, looking down at her.

She had plenty of things she wanted to say to Arabella. Plenty of things she wanted to do. But before she could decide which grievance deserved her attention first, the estate shook.

BOOM!

The explosion struck without warning.

The walls shuddered. The windows rattled violently in their frames, and a sharp crash sounded somewhere beyond the bedroom. Dust drifted from the ceiling as the distant roar rolled through the corridors.

Lucille's head snapped towards the door.

For one brief moment, even she looked surprised.

Then came the footsteps.

Several pairs of them, running hard down the hallway.

Lucille moved immediately.

She slipped around the side of the bed and lowered herself to the floor, squeezing into the narrow space beneath it. Dust brushed against her clothes as she pulled herself farther back, making herself as small as possible. She settled into the shadows just as the bedroom door flew open.

Armed guards rushed inside.

"Ma'am! Are you okay?" one of them demanded, hurrying towards the bed.

Arabella stared at him.

She wanted to answer. She wanted to tell him that someone had entered her room, that a strange woman had injected her with something, and that she could no longer move properly.

But her tongue refused to cooperate.

The guard leaned over her, alarm spreading across his face.

"She seems unable to move or talk," he told the others.

Another guard stepped closer, checking her condition as best he could. His eyes moved over her face, searching for some indication that she understood him.

"Ma'am? Can you hear me?"

Arabella's eyes shifted towards him.

That was all she could manage.

The men exchanged uneasy looks. Whatever had happened to her, it was clear that leaving her in bed was no longer an option. With an explosion having just rocked the estate, they couldn't afford to waste time trying to work out the cause of her condition.

Their leader entered the room, his weapon still in hand.

"What happened to her?"

"We don't know, sir. She can't move or speak."

He glanced towards the doorway, listening to the commotion outside. More guards were shouting instructions in the corridors, and somewhere in the distance, someone called for additional men to secure the lower passage.

The leader's expression hardened.

"Take her to the bunker."

One of the guards immediately moved to lift Arabella from the bed while another helped support her. Her body remained limp between them, leaving her entirely dependent on their movements. She couldn't protest as they carried her away, and she couldn't warn them about the woman who had injected her.

The guards hurried towards the door.

Within seconds, the bedroom had emptied.

The door remained open for a moment before one of the men pulled it shut behind them.

Silence settled over the room. Beneath the bed, Lucille remained perfectly still.

She listened to the guards' footsteps recede down the hallway, their voices gradually disappearing into the chaos spreading through the estate. She could hear more men moving outside, boots striking the floor, weapons clinking against belts, and urgent orders being shouted from one corridor to another.

The explosion had changed everything. Arabella was being moved to a more secure location, and Lucille had lost her opportunity to deal with her privately. Worse, the guards were now on high alert, searching the estate for whoever had caused the blast.

And Lucille was still inside.

Getting into the estate had been easy enough. Getting out, however, was beginning to look like an entirely different problem.

For the first time since entering the room, Lucille had a reason to be patient.

She stayed where she was, barely breathing, and waited for the next set of footsteps to pass.

Later That Afternoon

Raymond's Bedroom

When Raymond finally woke up, the first thing he noticed was the heaviness in his head.

The second was Alex, sitting beside his bed as though she had been waiting for him to regain consciousness.

He blinked several times, trying to persuade the room to stop feeling quite so distant. His mouth was dry, his limbs felt sluggish, and the afternoon light filtering through the curtains suggested he had been asleep for considerably longer than he would have liked.

Alex, on the other hand, looked perfectly pleased with herself.

Raymond turned his head towards her.

"What did you put in my food?"

"Sleeping syrup," Alex answered casually. "I couldn't get the pills. You know how the doctors are."

Raymond stared at her.

There were several things he could have said to that. He could have asked why she thought drugging him was acceptable, why she hadn't simply told him what she intended to do, or whether she had considered the possibility that he might have wanted to make his own decisions about remaining conscious.

Instead, he looked at her for another moment, allowing the full absurdity of the situation to settle over him.

His sister had apparently decided that his cooperation was optional and his consciousness an inconvenience.

Alex picked up a small table she had brought into the room and positioned it beside his bed. She then handed it to him, making sure he could reach it comfortably.

Raymond accepted it, though his expression suggested he was still trying to determine which part of the afternoon he ought to be most offended by.

Meanwhile, one of their drones was flying over Hugo's estate, surveying the aftermath of the operation. They had been waiting for confirmation, and from what the drone could see, the mission appeared to have succeeded.

Alex looked rather satisfied with that conclusion.

"We killed Hugo," she announced. "Your hands are clean, and the killers aren't going to be tracked back to us. We're safe. You can just go back to living your boring life."

Raymond's eyes remained on her.

We killed Hugo.

She said it with the casual confidence of someone announcing that she had finished a particularly tedious household chore.

And then there was the matter of his clean hands. Apparently, being drugged and excluded from the operation counted as a perfectly reasonable way to preserve his innocence. He wasn't sure whether to appreciate the thought or resent the fact that his sister had made the decision on his behalf.

He looked down at the table she had handed him, then back at Alex.

"I don't know what to say."

"Thank you is what you should say, brother." Alex rose from her seat, wearing the proud expression of someone who believed she had done something exceptionally generous. "I protect."

With that, she walked towards the door.

There was no apology for the sleeping syrup. No explanation of what had happened at the estate beyond the claim that Hugo was dead. And certainly no invitation for Raymond to discuss whether he had wanted any part in the arrangement.

Alex had delivered her report, accepted the gratitude she believed she deserved, and considered the matter settled.

At the doorway, she paused briefly.

"Now I'm going to the Kingsbat."

"Okay," Raymond replied.

Alex left the room, carrying her confidence with her.

The door closed behind her.

Raymond lay back against his pillows, staring towards the ceiling.

He had apparently survived the afternoon without doing anything at all, which was an accomplishment he wasn't sure he wanted to celebrate. His sister had drugged him, carried out a mission, announced a murder, and informed him that he could return to his boring life—all before he had properly recovered from his nap.

Part of him wanted to get out of bed and demand answers. Another part wanted to close his eyes and pretend that, upon waking again, he might discover that his family had developed a healthier approach to communication.

Unfortunately, he knew Alex too well to expect miracles.

He had a great deal to think about, and very little desire to do any of it.

The Last Call

On the Road to the Bunker

The family SUV tore down the road, its powerful engine growling beneath the afternoon sun.

It was no ordinary vehicle. Hugo had once boasted that the family SUV could withstand a missile, and the people responsible for maintaining it had made certain that the claim was more than a father's attempt to impress his children. Its reinforced bodywork, armoured windows, and formidable construction made it a moving fortress, designed for a family whose enemies had long ago stopped respecting the difference between a business dispute and a death sentence.

Inside, Arabella sat in the back seat, surrounded by the steady hum of the engine and the muffled voices of the guards.

She could move again.

The thirty minutes Lucille had promised had finally passed, and the paralysis had worn off enough for her to regain control of her body, though the memory of lying helpless in her own bedroom remained unpleasantly vivid. She flexed her fingers, then carefully adjusted herself against the seat. Her wounded side still hurt, a persistent reminder that the day had already taken more from her than she had intended to surrender.

But the pain was no longer her greatest concern.

She knew who wanted her dead.

Lucille.

The name settled into her thoughts with a cold, ugly certainty. Arabella had encountered dangerous people before. As a lawyer, she had spent enough time around liars, criminals, and men who believed money could purchase the right to do anything they pleased. She understood threats. She understood revenge.

What she had not expected was to find herself at the centre of a woman's private war over Raymond.

Over Raymond.

The thought alone was enough to irritate her.

She glanced through the tinted window as the estate disappeared behind them. The guards had barely explained why she was being taken to the bunker. They had simply lifted her from her bed and carried her away while the entire house descended into chaos. Somewhere behind them, an explosion had torn through the estate, and armed men were now hunting for whoever had caused it.

She had been shot, drugged, and evacuated from her own home in the space of a single day.

It was becoming difficult to decide which indignity deserved her attention first.

Her phone vibrated.

Arabella looked down at the screen.

Father.

She answered immediately.

"Father?"

Hugo's voice came through the speaker, calm and firm. There was no greeting, no inquiry about her wound, and no expression of concern for the daughter who had been carried out of her bedroom unable to move or speak.

"The Hatters are our enemies," he said. "And you are not part of this."

Arabella went still.

For a moment, the only sound between them was the low rumble of the SUV's engine.

"The Hatters?" she repeated.

"Stay out of it, Arabella."

Her gaze sharpened.

She knew the name. Of course she did. The Hatters were not some collection of petty criminals whose existence could be dismissed with a phone call to the police. If her father was naming them as enemies, then whatever had happened at the estate was part of something considerably larger than a jealous woman with a syringe.

Arabella's fingers tightened around the phone.

"Father, someone tried to kill me."

"I know."

Two words.

No surprise. No hesitation.

Just a statement of fact.

Arabella stared ahead, her expression changing as the implications began to arrange themselves in her mind.

"You know?" she asked quietly.

"Listen to me. Whatever happens, you stay out of this. Do you understand?"

The question was not an invitation to argue. Hugo spoke with the authority of a man accustomed to issuing orders and watching other people rearrange their lives around them.

But Arabella was his daughter, not one of his guards.

She had spent enough of her life being told what she could and could not do. She had built a profession around understanding rules, finding their weaknesses, and knowing precisely when someone was attempting to use them as a weapon.

Her father had just told her that the Hatters were their enemies.

He had also told her that she was not part of the conflict.

Those two statements did not sit comfortably together.

"Father—"

"Arabella."

Her name came through the speaker like the closing of a door.

She stopped speaking.

For a few seconds, neither of them said anything. Outside, the road stretched beneath the afternoon light, and the SUV continued towards the bunker with its armoured windows reflecting the passing landscape.

Then Hugo spoke again.

"Stay alive. Let me handle the rest."

The call ended.

Arabella lowered the phone slowly.

She sat in silence, looking at the darkened screen while the vehicle carried her farther from the estate. Her father had given her an order, but he had also given her something else: a name, a conflict, and the unmistakable impression that there was far more happening than he was willing to tell her.

Her wounded side throbbed beneath her clothes.

Arabella looked out of the window, her face reflected faintly in the armoured glass.

Her father expected her to sit quietly in a bunker and leave everything to him.

Perhaps he believed that would keep her safe.

But there was a flaw in his reasoning.

Arabella Cavendish had never been particularly good at leaving questions unanswered.

The SUV swept around a bend, its tyres hissing against the road.

She slipped the phone into her pocket and leaned back against the seat, wincing as the movement pulled at her wound. For now, she would let the guards take her where they had been ordered to take her. She would allow her father to believe that she intended to obey him.

There were more immediate matters to consider.

She needed to recover. She needed to understand what Lucille wanted from Raymond, why the Hatters were involved, and what her father had failed to tell her.

And she needed to make certain that the next person who came looking for her would not find her lying helpless in bed.

Outside, the afternoon sun glinted off the SUV's reinforced windows.

Inside, Arabella watched the road ahead.

Her father had told her to stay out of the war. He had not told her what to do if the war had already come looking for her.