Halcyon House
 

Vivienne let the silence sit for a moment after he finished.

Not because his answer had unsettled her. Not because it had struck anything tender enough to deserve an immediate response. Simply because she preferred to place her reactions where she wanted them, not where other people expected them to land.

Outside, the city thinned and shifted as the car moved farther downtown, the lights changing from the polished restraint of the Upper East Side to something moodier, lower, more irregular. Inside, the cabin remained dim and expensive and close. Roman’s voice still seemed to linger faintly in the air between them, rough-edged and annoyingly unperformed.

He watched her while he spoke.

She had noticed that almost at once.

Not in the cruder way men sometimes did, mistaking scrutiny for entitlement. This was something more controlled, more irritatingly attentive. He was reading her as she read him, and most of the time that would have amused her. Vivienne had spent most of her life learning how to give away very little. Her face rarely betrayed much, her posture even less. That was survival in her world. That was polish. That was training.

So no, she wasn’t afraid of being watched back.

But she did notice it.

The problem was not that he was looking.

The problem was that he was observant enough for it to matter.

Most people in her orbit missed things. They were distracted by her name, by her face, by the version of her they preferred to project onto the room. Roman, unfortunately, seemed less susceptible to that particular weakness. He noticed when she went still. He noticed what she did with her hands. He noticed the warning beneath the polite words. He noticed too much for a man who should have been easy to dismiss.

Annoying.

And then there was the other thing. The one she did not name, even to herself.

Somewhere beneath the irritation—beneath the class disgust and the social certainty and the reflexive understanding that men like him existed on the wrong side of every line she had been raised to respect—there was a different kind of friction. Subtle. Unwelcome. The sort that made his mouth when he was being insolent more noticeable than it ought to have been. The sort that made the rough ease of him in a room full of wealth feel less ridiculous than it should have. The sort that would have offended her on principle if she had let herself examine it too closely.

So she didn’t.

It was easier to let the annoyance do its job.

Easier to keep him in the correct category: beneath her, beneath the world that made her, beneath serious consideration except where function was concerned. Roman Kessler was useful because he was useful to the Blackwells. She enjoyed the privileges of being one, and men like him were part of the ecosystem that came with those privileges. Necessary sometimes. Entertaining in the way sharp objects were entertaining if properly handled. Nothing more.

Still, when he said tonight that happens to be me, something at the edge of her mouth almost moved.

Not a smile.

Nothing so generous.

Just the faintest shift of contempt refined into interest.

“Temporary conditions rarely impress me,” she said coolly.

Her gaze moved over him once more, deliberate and unhurried, and she hated a little that it did not feel entirely clinical. The line of his shoulders as he leaned back. The roughness in his voice. The maddening absence of deference. He might have been attractive, she thought, if he had been less irritating. Or if he had been born into a world that taught him how to keep quiet at the right moments. Or if she were the sort of woman who permitted herself to look twice at men who did not belong.

She was not.

The car slowed.

Through the windshield, Halcyon House came into view.

The building sat half a block down on a quieter stretch of Chelsea, all restored brick, black steel, and expensive discretion. Six stories, maybe seven. Old bones. New money poured into them with enough taste not to ruin the original shape. A narrow canopy above the entrance. Frosted glass. Polished brass. The sort of property one of her family’s subsidiaries would own through three shell layers and a board no resident had ever actually met.

No visible chaos outside.

Which meant the interesting part was inside.

The driver eased to the curb.

Roman got out first.

Vivienne stayed where she was for the fraction of a second it took him to step onto the sidewalk and remain there, waiting. Then she slid across the leather seat and let herself out from the same side, gathering the file and stepping neatly onto the pavement. Roman caught the door before it could swing too wide, held it for the brief beat it took her to clear the car, then shut it behind her with a solid, controlled click. Cold air struck clean against her face and the hem of her skirt. The city felt different here—lower, grittier at the edges, the wealth less ancestral and more recently washed.

She straightened, adjusted her bag on her shoulder, and lifted her eyes to the building.

Then, without looking at him, she said, “Try not to confuse being needed with being irreplaceable.”

A beat.

Her gaze shifted toward him at last, cool and blade-thin.

“It makes men sloppy.”

Then she turned toward Halcyon House and started walking.

Roman didn’t move immediately when the car stopped.

Not because he hadn’t noticed the building. He had clocked it half a block away—the steel canopy, the polished brass numbers beside the door, the particular quiet wealth of a Chelsea conversion where the money had been poured in recently but carefully.

Blackwell money, most likely.

Or one of the smaller companies that pretended it wasn’t.

Instead he stayed in the seat a second longer, watching her reflection in the window as the car rolled to the curb. The city lights slid across her face in brief streaks of gold and red, catching the calm expression she wore like armor.

Temporary conditions rarely impress me.

Roman had heard the line.

He just hadn’t bothered answering yet.

Because there was something interesting about the way she said it.

It wasn’t the insult. That part was routine by now. Vivienne Blackwell seemed to operate under the assumption that if she stopped sharpening the edge of her voice for five minutes the world might collapse.

It was the look that came before it.

The brief pause.

The almost-smile she killed before it could exist.

Roman noticed things like that.

Then the car stopped.

He pushed the door open before the driver could move.

Cold air hit him immediately—winter creeping down the narrow Chelsea street, the wind carrying the faint smell of damp pavement and restaurant kitchens further down the block.

Roman stepped out first.

Boots hitting the sidewalk with a soft thud as he straightened and glanced once up at the building. The windows were lit in scattered patterns above them. No visible police lights. No gathering crowd. No sign of anything unusual.

Which, in his line of work, usually meant the situation was already well underway.

He turned just in time for Vivienne to slide across the seat and step out behind him.

The door started to swing wider with the motion of the car’s suspension.

Roman caught it automatically, his hand closing around the edge of it before it could knock awkwardly against the curb. He held it just long enough for her to clear the frame of the car, then pushed it shut with a solid click.

The driver pulled away a second later, the engine humming softly as the car merged back into traffic and left them standing beneath the streetlights.

Roman shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat and looked up at the building again.

Halcyon House.

Nice place.

Expensive without advertising it.

The kind of building where residents paid extra specifically because no one asked questions.

Then she spoke again.

Try not to confuse being needed with being irreplaceable.

Roman’s mouth curved faintly.

Of course she couldn’t leave it alone.

He glanced sideways at her just as she turned toward him.

Her eyes were sharp again.

Controlled.

Cold enough to cut glass.

It makes men sloppy.

Roman watched her for half a second.

Then he gave a quiet huff of breath that might have been a laugh.

“Yeah,” he said.

His voice was low, easy, completely unimpressed.

“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

She turned and started walking toward the entrance before he finished the sentence.

Roman fell into step beside her.

The sidewalk was damp from earlier rain, reflecting the glow of streetlights in long dull streaks. A couple walking a dog passed them on the opposite side of the street. Somewhere down the block a taxi honked once before the sound disappeared into the city’s background noise.

Roman studied the building again as they approached.

Security camera above the door.

Keypad entry.

Discreet but not subtle.

His eyes flicked to the frosted glass panel beside the entrance.

Then back to her.

“You know,” he said casually as they reached the bottom step beneath the canopy,

“most people who say things like that are usually trying to convince themselves.”

A faint smirk touched his mouth again.

The same irritating one she’d already grown familiar with.

“But don’t worry.”

Roman stepped ahead of her just long enough to reach the door first. He grabbed the handle and pulled it open, holding it there while he glanced back at her.

“I’m not planning on getting sloppy.”

The smirk sharpened slightly.

“I’m planning on getting answers.”

Then he nodded once toward the lobby beyond the glass.

“After you, Blackwell.”

That, at least, was one thing they agreed on.

Vivienne didn’t look at him when he said it, but she registered it all the same—that slight shift beneath the usual abrasion, the clean line of intent under all the needless commentary. Answers. Not optics. Not posturing for her father or uncle. Not another round of men pretending containment and truth were interchangeable. Whatever else Roman Kessler was, he did not seem inclined to stand in a doorway and admire the smoke.

Good.

She had enough of those men already.

Halcyon House rose in front of them with the sort of curated restraint Blackwell subsidiaries favored when they wanted to look legitimate, expensive, and forgettable all at once. It wasn’t one of the hotel properties under her direct control; if it had been, she would have known the building before the car turned onto the block. Her official role kept her tethered to hospitality, guest experience, crisis management in polished lobbies where the messes wore better shoes. Residential assets like this tended to live in a different branch of the family’s machine—close enough to matter, far enough to blur.

Which meant she was seeing this place for the first time as an outsider with a Blackwell name.

A man in a dark suit was already waiting just inside the glass when they stepped into the lobby. Mid-forties, maybe, trim and alert in the way building staff became when they were told someone important was coming and warned not to fail in any visible way.

He moved forward at once.

“Ms. Blackwell. Mr. Kessler.”

His tone was careful, deferential without being sloppy.

“Gavin Price,” he said, offering the introduction with practiced efficiency. “Building operations manager. I was told to expect you.”

Of course he was.

Vivienne gave him a brief nod and handed him just enough acknowledgment to keep him useful.

“Show us.”

Price turned immediately, leading them past the front desk and through a lobby designed to imply discretion rather than warmth—stone floors, smoked mirrors, muted lighting, art chosen more for price than soul. The air smelled faintly of cedar and something floral that had been diluted into acceptability. Residents passed through spaces like this wanting to feel insulated. Protected. Unobserved.

All very expensive. All very false.

As they walked, Vivienne’s gaze moved over the architecture automatically, noting sightlines, access points, where cameras were obvious and where they should have been but weren’t. Price kept a respectful half-step ahead, speaking just enough to orient them without drifting into the kind of nervous overexplaining she despised.

“The flagged entries all trace through internal service circulation,” he said as he guided them past a private elevator bank and into a narrower corridor behind it. “Nothing resident-facing. At first, we thought it might be maintenance misuse or a staff credential issue.”

“And now?” Vivienne asked.

Price glanced back only briefly. “Now I think someone knew exactly which routes weren’t being watched closely enough.”

Interesting.

They passed through one coded door, then another. The finishes fell away the deeper they went—less polished stone, more painted wall; less fragrance, more steel and climate control. Back-of-house always told the truth more readily than front-facing spaces did.

“How long before someone reported it?” she asked.

“Officially?” Price said. “This afternoon.”

Vivienne’s expression did not change.

“And unofficially?”

That earned the briefest hesitation. Tiny. But there.

He answered carefully. “There were inconsistencies earlier. They were... not escalated.”

Of course they weren’t.

Because men always waited too long when the first answer available to them was denial.

“Who had access to the logs before tonight?” she asked.

“Security supervisors. Me. One regional facilities contact.”

Vivienne filed that away. “Names later.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

They reached a reinforced door at the end of the hall. Price keyed them in and stepped aside, letting them enter first.

The room beyond was smaller than Saint Celeste’s, cleaner, less performative. Halcyon House was not built for public-facing glamour, which meant even the security room felt more honest in its priorities: two long monitor banks, live feeds cycling through common areas and service corridors, one wall of access control terminals, a smaller desk stacked with printed badge records and internal logs. Function over theater. Better for getting real work done. Worse for hiding who had been lazy.

Price hovered just inside the threshold.

“I’ll be outside if you need anything.”

Vivienne looked once at the terminals, then the monitor grid, then back at him.

“I’ll need the complete badge history for the last seventy-two hours, internal camera retention status, and the names of everyone with override authority.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And no one enters this room unless I ask.”

Price gave a quick nod and withdrew, pulling the door shut behind him.

The quiet that followed was immediate and total.

Vivienne crossed to the desk without wasting another second, opened the file, and set it beside the printed logs already waiting there. Roman could have the monitors. She preferred the parts of an operation people thought looked boring. Access records, timestamps, override trails, credential overlaps—those were less romantic than footage and usually far more honest.

She leaned over the terminal, one hand braced lightly against the desk, hair falling forward over one shoulder in a dark, glossy line as she scanned the first sequence. Service routes. Time stamps. Badge numbers. Floor transitions. A pattern beginning to emerge, not clean enough yet to be named but there all the same.

Behind her, she could hear Roman moving toward the wall of screens.

Good.

Let him look.

Vivienne’s eyes narrowed slightly at the data in front of her.

Someone had been careful here.

Not perfect. Never perfect. But careful enough to make the shape of things look accidental at first glance. Which, if she was right, meant they had known exactly how much sloppiness the building would tolerate before someone competent arrived to notice it.

Her fingers moved over the keyboard, calling up another log set.

“Tell me if you see the same face more than once in places they shouldn’t be,” she said, not looking up. “Or if anyone on those screens looks too interested in not being seen.”

Then, after the briefest pause, more quietly:

“They wouldn’t have sent both of us here if they thought this was simple.”

Roman didn’t answer right away.

Not because he disagreed.

Just because he was watching.

The monitors cast shifting bands of cool light across the room, turning the glass and steel around them into something almost aquatic. Rows of feeds cycled silently—service corridors, elevator lobbies, loading bays, quiet hallways where nothing seemed to happen and yet everything always did.

He moved slowly along the bank of screens, one hand resting lightly on the edge of the console, posture loose in that deceptively unbothered way he carried himself when he was actually paying very close attention.

Vivienne’s voice had come without her looking at him.

Efficient. Direct. Already working.

He almost smiled.

Roman reached forward and tapped a key, freezing one of the rotating feeds. The frame held on a service elevator corridor from earlier that afternoon—blank concrete walls, a rolling cart abandoned near the door, the quiet hum of fluorescent lighting that made every building like this feel vaguely temporary.

He let the moment stretch before answering.

“You’re assuming they’re that disciplined,” he said finally, voice low in the quiet room.

Not dismissive.

Just testing the shape of the idea.

He stepped closer to the screen, leaning slightly as he rewound the clip a few seconds. A man crossed the far end of the hallway—maintenance uniform, head down, pushing the cart.

Roman watched him pass once.

Then again.

Then again.

“You’d be surprised how often people who think they’re careful still give themselves away,” he continued.

His gaze flicked briefly toward Vivienne across the room.

She was bent over the terminal, hair falling forward, already halfway inside the system like it belonged to her.

Roman’s attention returned to the monitor.

The cart.

The walk.

The way the man’s shoulders shifted when he passed the camera.

“Look at this.”

He stepped back slightly so she could see the screen without leaving the terminal if she didn’t want to.

“He comes through this corridor three times in two hours,” Roman said. “Same uniform. Same cart.”

He tapped the timeline again.

“But the cart’s empty the first time.”

A few seconds later on the feed, the same man returned pushing it again.

“This time it isn’t.”

Roman tilted his head, studying the frame with that same quiet concentration.

“And the third time,” he said calmly, “he forgets something.”

The cart passed the camera once more.

This time the man glanced up.

Not long.

Just a flick of the eyes toward the camera before looking away.

Roman’s mouth curved faintly.

“People who belong somewhere never check the cameras,” he said.

He let the clip run another second before freezing it again.

Then his attention drifted across the wall of monitors, scanning the other feeds with patient thoroughness.

Vivienne spoke again behind him.

They wouldn’t have sent both of us here if they thought this was simple.

That earned a quiet exhale of amusement from him.

Roman rested his forearms lightly on the console, gaze still on the screens.

“No,” he said.

His voice was softer now, but the certainty in it was clean.

“They wouldn’t.”

He tapped another camera feed and pulled up the access log tied to the corridor Vivienne was already working through.

Numbers began aligning across both systems—timestamps from the badge records appearing beside the video feed.

Roman glanced over his shoulder toward her.

“Your logs showing any badge tied to maintenance routing around fourteen forty-two?”

A beat passed.

Then he added, almost casually:

“Because if they are, I’d be curious whose name is on it.”

His eyes slid back to the frozen frame of the man and the cart.

The faintest edge crept into his voice now.

Not anger.

Interest.

“Something tells me whoever planned this,” Roman said quietly, “didn’t expect the boring parts of the system to talk to each other.”

Vivienne’s eyes lifted from the terminal the moment he said look at this.

Not because she liked being summoned to screens like some hotel manager in heels, but because the tone in his voice had shifted just enough to matter. Less commentary. More edge. That, she respected more than she intended to.

She moved closer without hurry, one hand still resting near the keyboard as her gaze settled on the frozen frame.

Maintenance uniform. Cart. Corridor. The kind of face the eye slid past if it wasn’t trained to stop.

Roman was right about one thing, at least: men who belonged somewhere never checked the cameras.

This one had.

Vivienne leaned in slightly, studying the timestamp, then the route marker, then the cart itself.

“Run it forward,” she said.

Her voice stayed low and even, but her attention had sharpened. The terminal behind her still glowed with access records, cross-referencing in quiet little columns while Roman pulled the man’s movement through the building into sequence. She watched the pattern emerge one corridor at a time.

He came through again.

Empty cart the first pass.

The second time it was stocked—cleaning supplies visible near the top, linens, something bulky bagged beneath them.

Then the third.

The same man, same corridor, same cart.

Only this time he looked at the camera.

Not long enough to be stupid.

Just long enough to be conscious of it.

Vivienne’s expression didn’t shift, but something inside her clicked neatly into place.

There.

There was the break.

“Keep following him,” she said.

Roman did, pulling up the next available camera with the same timestamp trail while Vivienne returned briefly to the desk to check the routing logs. Badge path. Elevator service use. Stairwell access. Floor transitions. The credential tied to maintenance looked legitimate enough on paper, which almost amused her. Men always thought a proper credential made them invisible.

The screens told a different story.

The man pushed the cart off the service corridor and out toward a rear exit. Another camera caught him emerging onto the narrow smoking apron behind the building, shoulders hunched against the cold as he lit a cigarette and stood there alone in the wash of a security floodlight. He smoked one. Then another. Not rushed. Not nervous. Waiting, if she had to guess. Or timing.

Then he checked his phone.

Vivienne narrowed her eyes.

He went back inside after that, same measured pace, same cart route, same floor.

Again the cart was empty at first.

Again, later, it wasn’t.

This time they tracked him down the hall to one specific room.

He stopped. Keyed in. Entered.

When he came back out, the cart was full.

Different now. Weighted. Covered loosely enough to pass at a glance, neatly enough to suggest practice.

Then—

Nothing.

The next camera that should have picked him up did not.

Not static. Not blackout. Just a clean continuity break so subtle most people would never question it. Footage resumed as though the corridor had simply remained empty in the intervening minutes.

Vivienne stared at the screen for one beat too long.

“Neat,” she murmured.

Not praise.

Just recognition.

Someone had altered the feed carefully. No clumsy wipe. No obvious jump. Whoever handled it understood what made people lazy: if nothing dramatic looked wrong, they stopped looking.

Her gaze moved to Roman only briefly, then back to the wall of monitors.

“Go back to the room.”

He did.

They watched the corridor outside it from the nearest available angle and let the timeline run.

The door remained closed.

Minutes passed in cold digital silence.

During the span when the maintenance man had been outside smoking, another figure entered frame.

Vivienne went still.

The girl.

There was no dramatic entrance. No visible panic. She moved quickly, head down, coat on, the sort of purposeful movement people used when they were trying not to draw attention rather than when they believed they were safe. She reached the room, paused only long enough for the door to open from inside, then slipped in.

Vivienne’s mouth flattened.

There.

At the edge of the frame, just as the door opened wider, she caught it—

Not a face.

Not enough.

But a flash of metal at a wrist. Or a hand. Something old-fashioned, expensive, unmistakably familial in taste. Signet or cufflink, dark coat, male proportions. Someone from her world. Someone who dressed like they never once had to think about cost. The kind of detail most people would miss and she had been raised to clock instantly.

Her eyes narrowed.

Family.

She did not say it.

Not out loud.

But the thought landed hard and immediate.

Lucien, she assumed first. Of course Lucien. The idiot had likely decided to “manage” his own problem with all the grace and foresight of a spoiled man who had never cleaned up anything except his own reputation. That would be just like him—sloppy enough to start the fire, arrogant enough to think he could contain it personally after. And yet... no. Not all of this. Lucien was reckless, entitled, and catastrophically stupid, but he was not disciplined enough to build something this tidy on his own. If he was involved, then someone smarter had almost certainly been arranging the pieces around him.

Still, something about the shape of it bothered her.

No cameras in the room.

Altered hallway footage.

A maintenance man who moved like he had instructions.

Vivienne kept all of that to herself.

The last thing she intended to do was narrate every suspicion that crossed her mind to Roman Kessler just because he happened to be standing in the same room looking competent.

She stepped back from the desk, gaze still on the monitor.

“I want to see that room.”

It was not framed as a suggestion.

Her attention shifted toward the access logs again, then to the blank stretch where the altered footage resumed as if nothing had happened at all. Irritation slid beneath her composure like a blade being drawn.

“There are no cameras inside, which means whatever matters is no longer on a screen.”

Only then did she look at him.

He was still by the monitor wall, all dark angles and quiet concentration, annoyingly aligned with her on the essential point of the evening even if she disliked nearly everything else about him.

Vivienne tilted her head the slightest degree.

“You can stay here and keep digging through the feeds if you like,” she said coolly. “Though I suspect whoever cleaned this up knew exactly how much to leave behind.”

Her gaze flicked once more to the altered corridor.

“You’ll likely find less the longer you stare at it.”

She turned toward the door then, leaving the file where it lay open on the desk, one hand already reaching for the handle.

Whatever happened in that room had left a trail.

And if the cameras had been taught to lie, she would simply have to ask the walls instead.

Roman didn’t answer her immediately.

Not because he disagreed.

Because he was still watching the screen.

The frozen corridor sat in front of him, the security footage paused where the edit had smoothed over the missing minutes. Whoever had cut the feed had done it well—too well for some amateur security guard trying to cover his own mistakes. The transition between frames was clean. No jitter. No timestamp jump obvious enough to make a tired night manager question it.

Professional.

Roman leaned forward slightly, one hand braced against the desk beneath the monitors, eyes moving slowly across the screen like he could will the missing moments back into existence.

He’d seen work like that before.

Not often.

But enough to recognize the fingerprints.

“Yeah,” he muttered quietly.

“Someone knew what they were doing.”

He let the footage sit for another second before straightening again. The glow from the monitors cut sharp lines across his face, throwing shadows under his cheekbones and along the edge of his jaw.

When she said I want to see that room, he finally looked over at her.

Not surprised.

Not impressed.

Just… acknowledging the obvious.

Of course she did.

Vivienne Blackwell didn’t look like the type who waited politely while someone else investigated something that belonged to her family.

Roman watched her step back from the desk, watched the irritation sharpen in the line of her mouth as she studied the gap in the footage one last time.

Then she turned for the door.

You can stay here and keep digging through the feeds if you like.

Roman let out a quiet breath through his nose.

Not quite a laugh.

More like a man accepting something inevitable.

“Yeah,” he said.

“You’re right about that.”

He pushed away from the desk and reached out, tapping the keyboard once more before leaving the terminal. The footage began running again on a loop behind them, the corridor replaying its quiet lie as if the missing minutes had never existed.

Roman grabbed the folder she’d left open and flipped it shut with one hand, sliding it under his arm as he crossed the room after her.

The security office door opened into the hallway beyond, fluorescent lights buzzing faintly overhead.

She was already halfway down the corridor by the time he caught up.

Roman fell into step beside her easily, long strides matching her pace without effort.

“You know,” he said casually, voice low enough not to carry down the hallway,

“maintenance guy wasn’t nervous.”

He glanced sideways at her.

“Most people messing with camera feeds get twitchy.”

A small shrug followed.

“He didn’t.”

They passed a pair of tenants near the elevator lobby—both of them pretending not to stare as the two of them moved through the building like they belonged there.

Roman ignored them.

“Which means he either knew exactly what he was supposed to do…”

A beat.

“…or he wasn’t worried about getting caught.”

They reached the door at the end of the corridor.

Roman pushed it open ahead of her, stepping into the stairwell landing where the air was cooler and the smell of concrete replaced the soft luxury of the hallway carpet.

He nodded toward the upper floors.

“That room’s on four.”

Then he looked back at her.

A faint smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“And for the record…”

Roman started up the stairs.

“I wasn’t planning on staring at that footage all night anyway.”

He glanced over his shoulder at her as they climbed.

“Screens lie.”

A beat.

“People usually don’t.”

Vivienne had expected him to follow.

Not because she needed the company. Not because she wanted it. But because by now she had seen enough to know Roman Kessler possessed at least one redeeming trait beyond competence: he seemed to recognize when someone else was right without wasting too much time resenting it first.

So when he came after her, closing the distance without argument, she was not surprised.

She noticed the lowered voice, though.

That, too, earned a quiet mark in his favor. He had finally absorbed what she meant in the car—not the obvious surface of it, but the actual point. Not every thought needed witnesses. Not every conclusion needed air. Especially not inside a building that belonged, however indirectly, to her family.

Good.

Maybe he wasn’t hopeless.

She said nothing to his observation about the maintenance man, but she agreed. The man hadn’t carried himself like someone improvising. No darting eyes, no rush, no sloppy panic masked as confidence. He had moved like someone doing a job he expected to finish.

Vivienne filed that away alongside a second, more irritating realization: Roman was keeping up.

Physically, yes—that had been obvious from the beginning. But mentally too. He was not dragging a step behind her, nor reaching ahead of her in a way that required correction. He was simply... there. Tracking the same line of thought fast enough to stay in rhythm with her.

Annoying.

And, if she were being very honest with herself, a little impressive.

The elevator lobby came into view just as a couple stepped out of the hallway alcove nearby, late-thirties, expensive athleisure, the sort of residents who paid for discretion and then immediately developed curiosity whenever anything threatened it. They looked at Vivienne and Roman the way wealthy people always looked at disruption in their building—subtly, greedily, as if scandal were more tasteful when it happened to someone else.

Vivienne paid them no mind.

She simply kept walking past the elevators and toward the stairwell door. The last thing she wanted was to be trapped inside a mirrored box with residents attempting politeness and Roman attempting commentary.

The stairwell was cooler, cleaner, stripped of the building’s performance. Concrete. Steel rail. Fluorescent light. Functional.

She stopped just inside the landing.

Not dramatically. Just long enough to look up at the flights of stairs, then sideways at him.

Roman took the lead without being told to, already heading upward toward the fourth floor.

Vivienne followed a beat later, one hand gliding briefly over the rail without really using it, boots quiet but sharp against the concrete steps.

“People lie constantly,” she said after a few steps, voice level, carrying just enough in the enclosed space to reach him without turning intimate. “More often than they tell the truth, in my experience.”

A pause.

“But I understand what you mean.”

Screens were curated. Altered. Cropped. Timed. People were too, of course, but they slipped in different ways. Rooms did as well. Air held things. Space held pressure. The arrangement of objects, the timing of exits, the feel of a place after something had happened in it—those were harder to erase completely.

By the second landing, her breathing remained even, controlled. She kept pace behind him without hurry.

“The room will have been cleaned by now,” she said. Not cynicism. Fact. “Anything obvious will already be gone.”

She lifted her eyes toward the next flight.

“I’m not looking for something obvious.”

Her tone cooled another degree, sharpening with intention.

“I want to see how it sits. What they chose to remove. What they forgot to consider. And if we are unusually fortunate, perhaps something else that survived the edit.”

That was the real hope, though she disliked naming hope aloud. Not evidence in the clean, cinematic sense. More like residue. A misplaced object. An odd scent. Damage where there shouldn’t be any. Something small enough for lazy men to miss and serious people to recognize.

By the time they reached the fourth-floor landing, the irritation that had followed her from the townhouse had settled into something cleaner. More useful. Movement always helped. Purpose did too.

Roman opened the stairwell door for them again, and Vivienne passed through without acknowledging it, already focused on the corridor ahead.

This floor was quieter than the others had been. Softer lighting. Better carpet. Fewer visible access points. The kind of hallway designed to feel private enough that residents assumed nothing bad could happen there without their consent.

They moved toward the room from the footage, footsteps muted now.

Vivienne had been hoping, distantly, for a keypad or a badge panel. Something she could test without witnesses. Something the Blackwell credential still tucked in her bag might persuade.

But no.

Just a locked door.

Plain. Expensive. Silent.

Of course.

She stopped in front of it and looked at the handle once, then the frame, then the discreet little brass room number mounted beside it. Nothing visible out of place. No scuffs worth noting from this angle. No forgotten tray. No easy gift.

Irritating.

After a beat, she turned her head and looked at Roman.

Her gaze traveled over him once—not lazily, not suggestively, simply measuring what, precisely, he might be worth in this next minute.

Then she asked, cool and direct:

“Tell me your talents extend beyond brooding at security footage.”

A slight pause.

“Can you get me into this room without forcing me to fetch Mr. Price?”

Roman slowed a few steps ahead of her when she spoke about people lying.

He didn’t turn around right away.

The stairwell light hummed overhead, a faint buzz of electricity echoing softly in the concrete space while their footsteps carried upward in measured rhythm. The building had that particular quiet expensive residential towers had late in the evening—no shouting, no slamming doors, just the distant murmur of televisions behind insulated walls and the occasional elevator chime from somewhere deeper in the structure.

When she finished, Roman glanced back at her over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he said.

“People lie.”

His voice stayed low, casual.

“They’re just worse at editing themselves afterward.”

He kept climbing.

The truth was he agreed with almost everything she’d said about the room.

The obvious evidence would already be gone.

Someone had moved through there before they arrived—maintenance guy, whoever he’d been working for, maybe someone else afterward. Surfaces wiped. Anything stupid removed.

But rooms held onto things people forgot to think about.

Pressure. Timing. The way furniture shifted. The way air moved.

He’d learned that years ago watching detectives work scenes his father brought him to after hours.

By the time they reached the fourth-floor landing, Roman’s breathing was still even. He pushed open the stairwell door again without breaking stride, stepping into the hallway first.

This corridor was different from the lower floors.

Quieter.

Thicker carpet.

Better lighting.

The kind of place residents paid a premium for specifically because nothing messy was supposed to happen here.

Roman’s eyes moved down the hall automatically.

Camera in the far corner.

Another one halfway down.

He noted the angles without stopping.

Then they reached the door.

He watched her study it.

The handle.

The frame.

The number plate.

Vivienne Blackwell did the same thing he would’ve done.

She didn’t reach for it immediately.

She read it.

Roman leaned slightly against the wall across from the room, arms loose at his sides while she finished her quiet assessment.

Then she turned and looked at him.

Tell me your talents extend beyond brooding at security footage.

Roman’s mouth curved faintly.

He pushed off the wall.

“Barely,” he said.

Then she asked the real question.

Can you get me into this room without forcing me to fetch Mr. Price?

Roman stepped closer to the door.

Up close the hardware looked exactly like what he expected: high-end electronic deadbolt with a manual override plate hidden beneath the handle assembly. Expensive enough to discourage amateurs. Not expensive enough to stop someone who knew what they were doing.

He crouched slightly, examining the seam around the lock with two fingers.

“No need to bother Mr. Price,” he murmured.

Roman reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a slim leather kit that unfolded into a set of narrow metal tools.

He glanced up at her once.

“You’re not the only one your family keeps around for specific purposes.”

The faintest smirk touched his mouth.

Then he turned back to the door.

The tools slid into place with quiet precision.

Roman worked the mechanism patiently, one hand steady against the handle while the other manipulated the tension bar inside the lock. He didn’t rush. Locks like this punished impatience.

For a few seconds the hallway remained completely still.

Then there was a soft internal click.

Roman straightened slowly and pushed the handle down.

The latch released.

He stepped back half a pace, leaving the door closed but no longer locked.

“After you,” he said quietly.

Then he added, almost as an afterthought:

“Try not to expect anything obvious.”

Vivienne stepped aside just enough to give him room, expression unchanged save for the faint hardening around her mouth that always arrived when a man had the audacity to be exactly as capable as he claimed.

She had not actually expected him to do it.

The question had been half practical, half provocation—the kind of dismissive little test people like her had been raised to make without even thinking about it. Can you? Are you more than posture and insolence and expensive inconvenience? Most men outside her world failed those tests in one way or another. They bluffed, overpromised, reached for force where finesse was needed.

Roman, annoyingly, did neither.

He simply got on with it.

Vivienne watched him work with a stillness that could have passed for boredom if anyone less observant had been there to misread it. Inside, though, she was taking note of everything: the lack of hesitation, the patience, the fact that his hands did not fumble once. When the lock gave with that quiet little click, irritation sharpened under her ribs—not because he had succeeded, but because some small, honest part of her was relieved he had.

Good.

That meant they would not need Price. No more staff. No more questions. No more witnesses than absolutely necessary.

Still, when Roman straightened and told her not to expect anything obvious, her annoyance deepened immediately.

Arrogant bastard.

As if she had not said nearly the same thing in the stairwell two minutes earlier. As if he were handing her some new piece of wisdom rather than parroting back her own instincts in that rough, maddening voice of his.

Vivienne did not dignify it with a response.

Instead, the second he stepped back, she moved past him and took the handle before he had any opportunity to perform another pointless courtesy.

She opened the door herself.

The suite was dark at first, all shadow and outline. Vivienne stepped inside, one hand finding the switch panel on instinct. Warm light came up in stages across a high-end sitting room that tried very hard not to read as personal.

It was a good room for secrets.

Neutral in the expensive way. Soft gray walls. Pale stone countertops visible through the partial kitchen beyond. Dark wood accents. A low cream sectional. Clean lines everywhere, the kind that implied masculine taste without ever attaching it to an actual man. Nothing sentimental. Nothing overtly lived in. The sort of suite meant to say temporary corporate residence while actually functioning as something far less innocent.

Vivienne stopped just inside the threshold and took it in.

No immediate mess. No overturned furniture. No obvious signs of struggle. Air faintly cool from overactive climate control. A room scrubbed not just of evidence, but of narrative. Whoever maintained it understood exactly how to preserve a space by making it feel like no one had ever mattered there.

Behind her, Roman entered more quietly than she’d expected.

For a few moments neither of them spoke.

Vivienne moved farther into the room at an unhurried pace, gaze passing over the usual things first—the glassware, the throw blanket, the placement of chairs, the absence of anything left by accident. Her irritation had lowered just enough now for another, less comfortable thought to begin pressing at the edges of her mind.

Roman was too convenient.

Too competent. Too quickly placed. Too often arriving ahead of her, with just enough knowledge to be indispensable and just enough distance to remain deniable.

Charles and Adrian had put him in her path more than once now. Sent him in early. Left him in the room before she arrived. Paired them here as if the arrangement had already been decided before anyone pretended to ask what should be done.

He could be exactly what he appeared to be.

Or he could be in on whatever game they were actually playing.

The thought did not alarm her so much as sharpen her.

Vivienne kept her face unreadable and continued her slow survey of the suite as though nothing in her mind had shifted at all.

Then she started seeing it.

Not one thing. A cluster.

A bottle on the bar cart—wrong brand for Lucien, who preferred things more expensive-looking and less drinkable. A specific imported sparkling water in the kitchen. The protein drinks in the refrigerator when she crossed far enough to glance inside. The expensive men’s grooming products in the bathroom, visible from the hall when she angled that way. A particular niche cologne she knew not from interest, but from years of passing Sebastian in corridors and cars and watching women notice after he’d left. The understated, aggressively curated sameness of it all.

Not Lucien.

Sebastian.

Her brother’s fingerprints were all over this place—not literal ones, no doubt, but the quieter kind. Preference. Habit. Repetition. The things men never imagined women clocked because they assumed women noticed only flowers and feelings and who was rude at dinner.

Vivienne’s gaze moved over the room with no visible pause, no obvious snag on any one object. She simply took inventory as she went, building the tally silently in her head.

Sebastian liked the suite cold. Sebastian stocked his own waters. Sebastian used that cologne. Sebastian never stayed anywhere long enough to leave emotion behind, only patterns.

Interesting.

And deeply, deeply irritating.

Because if this was his room—or one of them—then the shape of the fire had just changed again.

Vivienne turned slowly back toward Roman, who had begun his own assessment from the opposite side of the space. She watched him for a beat, wondering whether he saw what she saw, whether he had already been allowed closer to the family’s machinery than she realized, whether he was merely a tool in their hands or one of the hands.

Her tone, when she finally spoke, was calm enough to seem almost idle.

“Anything strike you as worth mentioning?”

A slight pause.

Her gaze held his evenly.

“Or is the room doing exactly what it was designed to do and pretending it belongs to no one at all?”