Chapter 2 - The House With No Curtains

By sunrise, Wren’s fever had broken enough for discharge, and Ronan was asleep across two plastic chairs with his head in Mia’s lap.

Adrian stood near the vending machines speaking softly into his phone.

“No names. No photos. Pull every camera angle from the Kensington garage and the hospital entrance. I want to know who was watching.”

Mia waited until he hung up.

“You are not bringing your war into my house.”

“It may already be there.”

“My house has nothing anyone wants.”

“You have two things someone could use against me.”

Her mouth tightened.

“They are not things.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

He accepted the accusation without defending himself.

Dot arrived with clean clothes and a bag of crackers. She had spent the night at the townhouse because Mia had left in such a rush she forgot her keys.

“You look terrible,” Dot told Mia.

“Thank you.”

Dot glanced at Adrian. “He looks worse.”

Adrian almost smiled.

Mia did not.

In the parking garage, Adrian tried once more.

“Come somewhere secure for forty-eight hours.”

“No.”

“Mia.”

“I said no.”

“Someone has already found your address.”

That stopped her.

He held out his phone.

A photograph filled the screen. Mia’s townhouse. Her blue front door. A picture taken before dawn.

Under it was a message sent to one of Adrian’s encrypted business numbers.

Pretty family.

Mia went cold.

“Who sent that?”

“We’re tracing it.”

“You said nobody knew who they were.”

“I was wrong.”

She looked at Ronan, half-asleep in Dot’s arms, and Wren clinging to Mia’s neck.

Every instinct screamed at her to run.

But running had only worked because no one knew what she was protecting.

“What does secure mean?” she asked.

Adrian’s answer came immediately.

“A house outside the city. Private road. No staff except people I’ve had for years. You choose the rooms. You keep the keys. I stay in a separate wing.”

“You stay there too?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Mia, I can protect them better if I’m close.”

“You can also destroy their lives better if you’re close.”

His eyes hardened, not with anger but pain.

“That’s fair.”

She hated that answer too.

Dot touched Mia’s shoulder. “Honey, the photo changes things.”

“I know.”

“You don’t have to trust him. Trust locks.”

An hour later, they drove north in a convoy Mia would have mocked in another life.

The house was not a mansion in the way she expected. It was a long stone building surrounded by pine trees, with windows facing a gray lake and almost no visible luxury from the road.

Inside, however, there were cameras, reinforced doors, silent security panels, and men who knew Adrian without looking directly at him.

Mia stopped in the foyer.

“No guns around the children.”

Adrian turned to his security chief, Matteo Rusk.

“You heard her.”

Matteo nodded. “Visible weapons stay outside family spaces.”

Mia looked at Adrian.

“You didn’t argue.”

“They’re your children.”

“Our children,” he said after a pause, “if you decide I’m allowed to use the word.”

Her chest tightened.

“You are not allowed yet.”

He nodded.

The twins woke properly by noon. Ronan wandered into the kitchen wearing dinosaur pajamas and found Adrian making coffee.

“Helping man.”

Adrian froze.

Ronan pointed at him. “You drove us.”

“The driver drove you.”

“You were in car.”

“That’s true.”

Ronan stared at the expensive watch on Adrian’s wrist.

“Does it beep?”

“No.”

“That’s boring.”

Adrian looked genuinely uncertain how to respond.

Mia watched from the doorway despite herself.

Wren appeared beside her, clutching a stuffed rabbit.

“Mommy, juice.”

Adrian opened a cabinet, then another.

“Where is the juice?”

Mia crossed her arms.

“You own this house.”

“I don’t stock it personally.”

Ronan frowned. “You don’t know where juice lives?”

For the first time in three years, Mia laughed in Adrian’s presence.

It escaped before she could stop it.

He looked at her, startled.

The moment vanished when Matteo entered.

“We found the photographer.”

Adrian’s expression changed instantly.

“Who?”

“Freelancer named Colin Vex. Paid through a shell company.”

“Whose?”

“We’re still peeling it back.”

Mia lifted Wren.

“Say the part you’re avoiding.”

Matteo glanced at Adrian.

Adrian answered.

“The shell company has done business with my uncle, Salvatore.”

Mia remembered Salvatore Castellano: charming, silver-haired, and always smiling as if he had already read the last page of everyone else’s story.

“He knew about me,” she said.

“He knew we were together.”

“He knew I was pregnant?”

Adrian went still.

“No.”

Mia watched his face and understood he was telling the truth.

Then Matteo spoke.

“There’s one more thing.”

Adrian looked at him.

“The message was scheduled before Mr. Castellano entered the Kensington ballroom.”

Mia’s blood turned cold.

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Someone had known Adrian would find her before Adrian himself knew she was there.

\nBefore Mia went upstairs, Adrian stopped beside the front window and watched one of his own guards replace a compromised camera. The sight seemed to disgust him.\n\n“I built systems because I thought systems were safer than people,” he said.\n\nMia paused on the stairs. “Systems are built by people.”\n\n“I’m learning that.”\n\n“You’re learning late.”\n\n“Yes.”\n\nShe expected defensiveness. Instead he looked toward the ceiling, where Ronan and Wren were settling into unfamiliar beds.\n\n“If they wake up scared, call me,” he said.\n\n“They’ll call me.”\n\n“I know.”\n\nThe answer followed her upstairs. It was the first time Adrian had offered help without attaching authority to it, and Mia hated that she noticed.\n