Chapter 7
Audrey's POV
The car came around eleven.
I heard the engine first—low, throaty, the kind that announces itself whether it means to or not. A custom muscle car, aggressively so, pulled up the private drive while I was still in the living room.
I should have gone upstairs. Gabriel had told me I didn't need to be involved, which was more or less a suggestion to make myself scarce.
I didn't move.
The man who walked in was maybe late twenties, brown-haired, wearing a jacket. He stopped when he saw me on the sofa with Maple in my lap. Half a second of recalibration. Then: "You must be Audrey."
I nodded.
"Connor Blackwood. Gabriel's cousin." He said it easily, like he'd introduced himself that way many times, but his eyes were doing a quick, quiet inventory—not rude, just the kind of looking that comes before deciding.
The surname landed in my chest before I'd fully processed it. Blackwood. One of them. Technically my mother's family—except my mother had left this family behind.
Gabriel appeared from the study. When he saw that Connor had already found me, his expression dropped exactly one degree. "You're early."
"You stopped answering your phone."
Gabriel looked at me.
"Upstairs, Audrey." A command, not a suggestion.
I went.
Connor was already following Gabriel toward the study, his voice dropping into something more businesslike than the easy tone he'd used on me. I understood I was being cleared out of whatever was about to happen.
I stopped at my door. I didn't go in.
I stood at the window at the end of the hall—the one that looked out over the front drive—and watched Connor's car sit there, engine off. Whatever they were talking about, it wasn't quick.
You don't need to be involved.
That sentence made one more loop through my head. If it were really nothing, he wouldn't have said anything at all.
I walked toward the top of the stairs. Quietly.
The study was just off the front entry, close to the staircase. The door wasn't fully shut—I could see the gap, the light spilling out onto the hallway floor below.
I sat down at the top of the stairs, back against the wall, knees against the railing. From here I could hear them. I couldn't see anyone.
I told myself I was just waiting to know when they'd be done.
Then I heard my name.
Connor's voice, clearly: "Eleanor wants Audrey moved to the Blackwood estate until the guardianship ends."
Gabriel: "No."
A pause. Then Connor, louder: "Eleanor already knows about the emergency guardianship. The press knows Audrey left Charleston with you. Your name is attached to the Mercer investigation, and now their daughter is living in your private residence."
"Audrey is not part of my investigation."
"That distinction won't matter once the story gets out."
I sat down on the window bench. Back against the wall. Eyes on the carpet.
"There's a security review scheduled for next month. If someone decides to make this an issue—"
"Let them."
"Gabe. Your clearance."
Silence.
Then Gabriel, without inflection: "She stays here."
Connor's next words came slower, like he was being careful. "I'm not arguing with you. I'm relaying what Eleanor wants you to hear. Marianne was adopted. She left the family years ago. That means Audrey isn't your personal responsibility—and she isn't the Blackwoods' either."
Marianne was adopted.
The words clicked into place the way a lock opens—no drama, just finality.
My mother had been adopted. She wasn't a Blackwood by blood.
I sat with that for a second.
Then Gabriel's voice dropped to something quieter and more dangerous. "Choose your next words carefully."
"I'm not agreeing with her." Connor's tone was even, careful, like a man defusing something. "I'm telling you how she intends to argue it. The guardianship expires soon. She wants to know what you intend to do after that."
"That's none of Eleanor's concern."
Silence.
He didn't finish the sentence. Just left it there—none of Eleanor's concern—which wasn't an answer so much as a wall. And walls, I was starting to understand, were what people built when they didn't have an answer they were willing to say out loud.
I stood up, stopped listening, and walked back to my room.
I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time.
I went through it the way you go through a math problem when you already suspect you've made an error but don't want to find it. My mother had been adopted. She'd left the Blackwoods before I was born. Gabriel wasn't my uncle—not by blood, not by anything except a name on a document that was running out of time.
He'd done all of this because he had legal reason to.
And after that?
I pulled my carry-on out of the closet.
It wasn't exactly a decision. More like insurance. Preparation. The thing you do when you need to feel like you have some control over the shape of what's coming. I took out the clothes I'd unpacked and folded them back in. Neat corners, the way my mother had taught me. Force of habit.
I got my phone and typed carefully into the search bar. Renting without credit history. Federal asset freeze, can the owner return to the property. Bus from Northern Virginia to Charleston, one way.
The results weren't encouraging. No credit history meant a cosigner or a larger deposit. No stable income meant most landlords wouldn't look twice. The Charleston house was still locked down—no access without a court order. The bus would take twelve hours and cost thirty-four dollars, which I had, but I'd be arriving at a house I couldn't enter to look for a man I couldn't reach.
Maple jumped into the open suitcase and sat directly on the folded clothes.
"Not yet," I told her.
She tucked her paws under her chest and settled in.
"We're not leaving yet," I said quietly, like it mattered. Like she could hear the difference between decided and almost decided. "We're just going to be ready."
Connor's car pulled out sometime in the early afternoon. The engine sound faded through the trees and then it was just the house again—the hum of the heating system, the distant sound of movement in the kitchen.
I was still sitting on the floor next to the half-packed bag when footsteps came up the stairs.
Gabriel stopped in the open doorway.
His eyes went to the suitcase.
"What is that."
"A suitcase."
"I can see that." A beat. "Unpack it."
"Why?"
"Because you're not going anywhere."
"Not today," I said.
He walked into the room. Not quickly—he never did anything quickly when he was thinking—but with that particular deliberateness that meant he'd registered something and was deciding how to respond. He stopped a few feet away.
"My mother was adopted," I said.
He went still. Not the controlled stillness from before. Something different. He was calculating how much I'd heard, how long I'd been sitting at that staircase.
"Yes."
"She wasn't related to you."
"Not by blood."
"And I'm not related to you either."
He looked at me for a moment. I watched him understand what I was doing—using the information as a reason, building a case for why being asked to leave would make sense, why I should see it coming, why getting ahead of it was the smart thing to do.
"That doesn't change what she was to me," he said. "Marianne was my sister. Nothing Eleanor says changes that."
He said my mother was still his sister. But what if one day he decided he'd done enough? What would happen to me after that document expired?
I didn't look away. "The guardianship ends when I turn eighteen."
"Yes."
"Your mother wants me at the Blackwood estate."
"That's not her decision to make."
I looked down at the suitcase.
"When the guardianship ends—" I made myself look at him. "Are you going to send me away?"
He looked at me. Then at the half-filled suitcase. Something in his expression was heavy—like he was weighing something that didn't fit on any scale he already owned.
