Chapter 2 · Inventory

He didn't let go of my wrist until the iron gates slammed shut behind the town car.

Even then, he peeled his fingers off one by one. Slow. Deliberate. Like he was giving me back my skin on loan.

"Cinder Point," Dominic said.

He didn't look at me when he said it. He didn't have to. The limestone walls rose thirty feet straight out of the jagged dark, pale as cracked bone against the trees. One road in. One road out. I'd clocked that five miles back through the tinted glass, the way you clock an emergency exit before the plane hits the runway.

Except there wasn't an exit.

"You're not going to chain me to a radiator," I said. My voice came out flat. Steady. If my hands were shaking, I shoved them into my coat pockets before he could see.

Dominic stepped out, walked around the hood, and pulled my door open. The night air smelled like salt and freezing black water.

"No," he said. He leaned down, close enough that his wool coat brushed my cheek, smelling of cedar, cold smoke, and pure money. "I give you a bed, three meals a day, and ninety days to track down your brother. Trust me, sweetheart. By week two, you'll be begging for the radiator."

He didn't offer a hand. He just waited until I stood up, his dark frame blocking the driveway, the lights, the entire sky.

Two men stood at the double front doors. Big. Tailored suits that couldn't hide the bulge under their left arms. They nodded to Dominic and looked right through me, like I was a crate of dry goods being delivered past inventory hours.

Inside, the place hit me with polished marble and bitter lemon wax. High vaulted ceilings. A curving staircase that disappeared into shadows overhead. An antique chandelier dripping crystal, dusted down to every prism.

I catalogued every inch without turning my head. Four doors off the foyer. Two locks on the main entrance. No ground-floor windows reachable without triggering the perimeter sensors on the wall.

Dominic caught my eyes flicking toward the keypad beside the latch.

His mouth kicked up at the corner. Not a smile. A dare.

"Keypad rotates every twelve hours," he murmured, barely two inches behind my ear. His breath was warm against my neck. "Four armed guards patrol the cliffline. The Atlantic out there is forty degrees and the rip current pulls due east. You want to strip and dive for it? Be my guest. I'll have the Zodiac fish you out before your lips turn blue."

"You've done this before," I snapped, stepping forward just to get out of his heat.

"I do what works."

A woman walked down the stairs, boots clicking crisp on the marble. Dark hair swept back in a blunt cut, razor-sharp jawline, maybe twenty-eight. She looked me up and down the way a vet looks at a stray dragged in out of a thunderstorm—calculating whether it has rabies before she decides to touch it.

"Gia," Dominic said, buttoning his jacket. "My cousin. She'll take you upstairs."

"The room?" Gia asked him.

"The room."

Singular. Like there was only one cage prepared for this exact tier of hostage.

"Come on, then," Gia told me. She turned on her heel without waiting to see if I followed. "Second floor."

I climbed behind her because there were two men behind me and zero other options. I counted twelve steps to the first landing, eight more to the gallery. Six doors lined the upper corridor. Heavy oak. Brass deadbolts.

Every single deadbolt was mounted on the outside.

Gia pushed open the fourth door. "En suite bath. Fresh towels in the vanity. Dinner is at eight downstairs. You don't have to eat, but you don't get room service if you throw a fit."

I stepped inside. King-size four-poster, a deep window seat, and tall glass looking straight out over miles of pitch-black ocean.

I went straight to the window and threw my weight into the frame. It budged half an inch and slammed against a steel stop.

"Reinforced security glass," Gia called from the doorway, leaning one shoulder against the casing. "Bolted from the masonry. Don't waste your manicure. I tried taking a heel to it five years ago."

I stared at her. "You tried?"

Her eyes went flat. "Castellanes don't air laundry to collateral. Get changed. Or don't."

She stepped back, pulled the door shut, and the deadbolt slid home with a solid, polite *thunk*.

I stood in the center of the Persian rug and forced my lungs to expand. One. Two. Three. Four. Panic was a luxury for people who had someone coming to rescue them. Nobody was coming for me. My brother was gone with five million of Dominic Castellane's dirty cash, and I was the insurance policy.

I went to work.

Closet first. Bare hangers, stack of Egyptian cotton sheets on the upper shelf. Bathroom next. No exposed pipes, no razors, mirror glued flat to the drywall with commercial adhesive. Nothing loose.

I went to the heavy mahogany dresser. Three drawers, lined with yellowed shelf paper. Empty.

I ran my fingers beneath the bottom lip, then reached around the back, pressing my palms along the rear backing board. Dad used to build custom cabinets out of a garage in South Boston before his debts buried him. His rule number one: *If a man's got a secret he can't burn, he nails it behind the bottom drawer.*

My thumb snagged on a seam.

Not nailed. Pried open, then glued back crooked.

I jammed my thumbnail under the edge, caught the plywood, and yanked. The dried wood gave way with a sharp *crack* that made me freeze, waiting for footsteps.

Silence.

Behind the panel sat a battered shoebox, corners frayed and soft with damp. Inside lay yellowed fuel receipts, three Polaroids of a shoreline dock I'd never seen, and a torn sheet from an old desk blotter calendar.

I stared at the handwriting on the calendar page.

Tight, cramped loops. The backward slant on every *y*. The little European crossbar slashed across every number seven.

My breath stopped in my throat.

My dad.

He'd been dead twelve years. Killed in a fiery rollover on Route 1 when I was fourteen. He had never owned a house like this. He had never worked for men like the Castellanes. He was an independent contractor who owed everybody in the county.

Or that was the lie I'd eaten my entire life.

I smoothed the scrap against my denim thigh. A single date was circled in dried red ink, pressed hard enough to gouge the paper.

Under it, four words scrawled in his rushed hand:

*Tell her before Friday.*

Six days before the crash.

The outside deadbolt scraped.

I shoved the box back behind the dresser panel, snatched the paper, and spun around with my hands behind my back just as the heavy oak door swung open.

Dominic stood in the threshold, his tie loosened, the top button of his black shirt undone. His dark gaze swept over the rumpled rug, locked onto my frozen stance, and instantly dropped to my hidden hands.

The air between us went dead cold.

"Dinner's on the table," he said. He didn't move. His voice dropped to a low, lethal register. "Now bring your hands where I can see them."