Evelyn’s voice filled the room.

“It’s done. The recorder is under his desk. He won’t notice. He never notices anything he doesn’t want to lose.”

A pause.

“Yes, after the wedding. He’ll transfer the port operations to me first. Then the shell accounts. Then Cross Harbor becomes ours.”

Another pause.

Her laugh came through the speakers like honey poured over broken glass.

“Adrian? Please. He wants a wife so badly he forgot to look for an enemy.”

Lily flinched.

Adrian did not.

The footage continued. Evelyn turned toward the camera she did not know existed, and for one frozen frame, she looked almost directly at him. Beautiful. Calm. Already victorious.

Then the office door opened.

Not on the screen.

In real life.

“Adrian?”

Evelyn Hart stepped into the office, smiling.

The monitor was still glowing behind him.

Adrian closed the hidden feed with one smooth motion and turned. The screen went black a half second before Evelyn saw anything. Lily, guided by some instinct older than language, slipped behind the heavy curtains near the bay window.

Evelyn crossed the room in a silk blouse and high-waisted gray trousers, the emerald on her finger catching the light.

“There you are,” she said warmly. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

Adrian looked at her.

For two years, he had seen warmth when she smiled. Intelligence when she listened. Desire when she touched his hand.

Now he saw only architecture.

Every gesture had been built for a purpose.

“You found me,” he said.

She leaned down and kissed his cheek.

The scent of her perfume—jasmine, smoke, and something sharp—settled around him. He had loved that scent. Or believed he did. Love and belief, he was beginning to understand, were cousins who lied for each other.

“You look tired,” she said, circling behind his chair. “Bad numbers?”

“Portland,” he answered.

The word was bait.

Evelyn’s fingers paused for less than a second on the back of his chair.

Then they continued.

“What happened in Portland?”

“Nothing yet.” Adrian leaned back. “A few people forgot who owns the river.”

She came around the desk and sat on its edge, close enough that her knee brushed his. “You shouldn’t have to keep fighting alone.”

He looked at her hand resting on the walnut surface. The same hand that had taped the recorder beneath it.

“In eleven days,” she murmured, “you won’t have to.”

“No?”

“No.” She smiled. “After the wedding, everything gets easier. You and me. No secrets. No enemies in separate rooms. Everything shared.”

“Everything?”

“Everything,” she whispered.

Adrian lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles.

“I trust you,” he said.

Evelyn’s smile deepened.

Behind the curtain, Lily Price did not move.

And Adrian Cross understood the first rule of the war now opening beneath his roof.

Only one of them knew it had begun.

That night, after Evelyn left and the staff lights dimmed one by one, Adrian found Lily sitting on the bottom step of the grand staircase. Nora was still upstairs cleaning. Lily had a sheet of paper balanced on her knees. Her blue pencil moved carefully across it.

Adrian sat two steps above her.

“What are you drawing?”