“The family is protective.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Her hand tightened around the door handle. “People who work in houses like this learn which questions keep their jobs.”
I softened my voice. “I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble.”
“No,” she said, looking back at me. “But trouble does not always care what you are trying to do.”
Then she left me alone.
I did not sleep that night.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Ethan’s opening. Heard his warning.
At midnight, the mansion became a different place. The grand halls that had glittered during the day now stretched dim and watchful beneath low lights. I wrapped a robe around myself and slipped into the corridor, moving quietly toward Ethan’s room.
The door was ajar.
A voice came from inside.
Jason’s voice.
I stopped just short of the doorway.
“You always were dramatic,” he said softly. “Even lying there, you manage to make everyone orbit around you.”
I pressed my palm against the wall.
No answer came from Ethan, of course.
Jason continued, “Grandmother thinks this marriage saves your position. She thinks a wife makes the trust airtight. But she’s missing the obvious.”
A floorboard creaked under my foot.
Jason stopped speaking.
I froze.
A second later, the door opened.
He stood in front of me, one hand in his pocket, his expression unreadable.
“Lost?” he asked.
“I wanted to check on Ethan.”
“At midnight?”
“I’m his wife.”
The word felt strange in my mouth, but I let it stand between us.
Jason looked amused. “For one day.”
“That still counts.”
He stepped aside slowly. “Of course.”
I entered the room, keeping as much distance from him as possible. Ethan lay still, unchanged.
Jason watched me walk to the bedside.
“You know,” he said, “I almost admire you.”
I did not turn. “For what?”
“Most people would have taken the money and kept their head down. But you have that look.”
“What look?”
“The one people get before they make expensive mistakes.”
I rested my hand on the back of the chair beside Ethan’s bed.
“Maybe I’m not as predictable as most people.”
Jason moved closer, though not close enough to be openly threatening. He had a way of occupying space as if he owned the air.
“My cousin was a complicated man,” he said. “Not the saint Grandmother likes to remember.”
“Was?”
A slight pause.
“Is,” he corrected. “Of course.”
I looked at him then. “What happened to him?”
“You don’t know?”
“I know there was an accident.”
Jason’s eyes narrowed with interest. “That’s all they told you?”
“That’s all anyone tells me in this house. Half-answers.”
He smiled. “Ethan drove off the road on a rainy night. His car hit the stone barrier near Briarcliff. Tragic. Clean. Convenient.”
“Convenient for whom?”
Something flashed in his eyes.
Then he laughed quietly. “Careful, Claire. You’ve been a Thornton for less than twenty-four hours. Paranoia usually takes longer.”
He left after that, his footsteps fading into the hall.
I sat down beside Ethan and waited until the silence settled again.
Then I whispered, “He was here.”
For a long time, nothing happened.
Then Ethan’s finger moved once.
A chill ran through me.
“You can hear me.”
Another small movement.
I leaned closer. “Is Mara safe?”
No movement.
