“I didn’t let them,” she managed.
“I know.”
When he lifted her into his arms, she tried to protest, but her body had become one long tremor of adrenaline and pain. He carried her through service corridors and out into the cold loading dock, bypassing the gala, bypassing the eyes, bypassing whatever story the city might have written if it had seen the look on his face.
At the estate, a private doctor stitched her arm. When they were finally alone, Langston stood by the window with a drink in his hand and the lake dark behind him like a sheet of steel.
“I miscalculated,” he said. “I thought she would humiliate you, not carve you.”
Amelia sat on the edge of the bed, watching him. His collar was open now, his hair slightly disordered, his composure held together by force alone. “You didn’t make her cruel.”
“No,” he said. “But I brought you into range.”
The honesty of it unsettled her more than any polished apology could have.
Then he told her what he had learned about Arthur.
Her father had once driven for both families. Not officially. Not honorably. He had moved packages, records, things men preferred not to list in inventories. Fifteen years earlier, something had disappeared under his watch: a ledger containing enough evidence to destroy the Vanderhoven empire.
Amelia stared at Langston as if he had switched languages. “My father was a bus driver.”
“He was also other things before you were old enough to notice,” Langston said quietly.
“And you think Camila knows this.”
“I think Camila believes your father hid the ledger and that you may know where.”
Amelia crossed the room until she stood directly in front of him. “And do you believe that?”
Langston looked down at her. For once there was no calculation in his expression, only a stripped, dangerous sincerity.
“I believe,” he said, “that if I cared about the book more than I cared about you, I would be a fool.”
She should have stepped back.
Instead she stayed where she was.
His hand rose to her face, rough thumb brushing the edge of her jaw, and when he kissed her it was not polished or patient. It was the kind of kiss built from restraint finally giving way, from fear disguised as fury, from two people standing too close to danger and discovering that desire was somehow more frightening.
Amelia kissed him back because the truth had already happened long before either of them admitted it. Somewhere between the handkerchief, the study lessons, the way he looked at her as if her courage were rare enough to protect, she had already crossed a line inside herself.
The knock at the door shattered the moment.
Rocco stood there, pale in a way Amelia had not seen before. “Boss. We have a problem.”
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