Dominic crouched beside him.
“Where is he?”
Nathan coughed. “Safe.”
Dominic grabbed him by the throat.
“Where?”
Nathan’s eyes reddened, but he smiled anyway.
“Far from you.”
Dominic tightened his grip until Nathan’s face darkened.
Then the billiard room phone rang.
Both men looked at it.
No one used that line. It had belonged to Dominic’s father, hardwired beneath the house decades before, connected only to old internal circuits and emergency relays.
It rang again.
Dominic released Nathan and picked up.
For a moment, there was only static.
Then a boy’s voice spoke.
Calm. Young. Controlled.
“Is Nathan alive?”
Dominic did not answer.
The voice continued, “Put him on.”
Dominic’s grip tightened around the receiver.
“Who is this?”
A pause.
Then the boy said, “You already know.”
Dominic felt the room recede.
Nathan, still on the floor, closed his eyes.
The boy on the phone breathed once, steady and close, as if he were calling from inside the walls.
“My name is Adrian Cross,” he said. “And if you touch my father again, I’ll burn the rest of your house down.”
The line went dead.
Dominic lowered the receiver slowly.
Outside, one of the guards shouted.
Then another.
Dominic crossed to the window.
Beyond the snow-covered lawn, past the black gates and the armed men, smoke rose from the carriage house.
Not thick. Not accidental.
A signal.
Nathan began to laugh softly from the floor.
Dominic turned toward him, and for the first time all day, the old adviser looked truly afraid—not of Dominic, but of what he had unleashed.
“He found out,” Nathan whispered.
Dominic looked back at the smoke, at the estate that had hidden graves beneath its stones and children beneath its lies.
Somewhere beyond the gates, Claire was running.