Chapter 4: House Rules
HARPER / 10:23 PM / Vance Residence, Upper East Side
They gave me a room that could've been lifted straight out of a five-star hotel catalog—California king bed, twelve-foot ceilings, a writing desk with fresh flowers arranged on it like nobody was actually supposed to touch them. The view from the window looked out onto the street below, all amber streetlights and the occasional black car gliding past. Nice. Completely impersonal. Exactly what I'd expected.
I set Duchess's carrier on the bed and unlatched it. She stepped out, took one long look around the room, then sat down at the far corner of the mattress and stared at me with the specific expression she used when she'd already made up her mind about a place and the verdict wasn't good.
"Yeah," I said. "I know."
I dropped my bag beside the door and stood still for a second. The headache was back—not the full thing yet, just the early pressure behind my eyes that I'd learned to track over the past four months, the way you track the weather when you're planning something that can't afford rain. It had started somewhere in the entry hall downstairs and it had been building since. Slow. Steady. The kind that didn't go away on its own unless I moved.
The Vance house had a weight to it. Not the physical kind—the ceilings were high, the rooms were open—but something else, something that had been sitting in the walls long enough to become part of the architecture. Everyone inside this building had been performing for each other for years, and that kind of thing left a residue. My body had picked it up the second I walked through the door and filed it under threat environment, which wasn't exactly conducive to the headache getting better.
I needed to get outside.
I picked up Duchess, settled her on my shoulder—she stepped into position with the ease of something she'd done a thousand times—and I walked out of the room.
The hallway upstairs was quieter than the entry floor, but Victoria was already there.
She was standing near the top of the staircase, about fifteen feet away, holding a glass of water and not drinking it. When I came out of the room she looked at me, and I looked at her, and neither of us said anything for a moment. She'd had time to adjust her face since the entry hall. What she'd landed on was careful and neutral, and honestly, that was smarter than I'd expected from her.
We were still doing the silent assessment thing when Valerie's voice came up from the floor below.
"Harper." She had the kind of projection you develop from years of filling rooms. "It's nearly eleven. Going out at this hour doesn't reflect well—not for anyone in this house."
I hadn't moved yet. I kept watching Victoria, who kept watching me.
"The neighbors notice things," Valerie continued. She'd moved to the base of the stairs, positioning herself for line of sight. "The press notices things. Arthur has relationships that depend on this family presenting a certain image, and that means everyone under this roof—"
"I'm going for a walk," I said.
"That's not—"
"I wasn't asking." I started toward the stairs.
Valerie stopped on the step. I could see her running the numbers—whether this was a fight she could win, or whether she was better off repositioning. She made the smart call, and then she said, with the specific tone of someone who thinks they're playing an unbeatable card: "Arthur won't like it. He's said very clearly that you're not to leave without—"
"Then he can say it to me directly."
Three steps from the landing, Victoria spoke. Her voice was even, slightly louder than necessary, and I noticed immediately that it was loud enough to carry to the small cluster of household staff who'd gathered in the entry below with the unerring instinct that domestic employees develop for moments worth knowing about.
"Darling." She used the word like she'd been practicing it. "Mother's right. We have standards in this family—all of us, now that you're home. A young woman going out alone at this hour doesn't look good for the Vance name. It doesn't look good for any of us. I know you wouldn't want to cause—"
"The Vance name didn't do much for me for the first twenty-one years," I said pleasantly. "I think I can borrow it for a walk."
Victoria didn't crack—she had better control than that—but I caught the slight adjustment in how she was holding the glass. Her grip had tightened.
Then Arthur Vance walked into the entry hall.
He came from the left, from the direction of some study or receiving room I hadn't been given a tour of. The white-haired manager was two steps behind him and was already talking in that clipped, efficient way of someone delivering a household intelligence briefing. Arthur listened without slowing down. His gaze swept the entry hall—Valerie, the staff, Victoria on the stairs—and then climbed all the way up to me.
"Harper." He didn't need to raise his voice. The room had already gone quiet the way rooms go when Arthur Vance enters them. "You should know better than—"
Duchess moved.
It wasn't dramatic. She simply shifted her weight forward on my shoulder and stepped off onto the newel post at the top of the banister like she'd been planning it since we left the room. Landed without a sound. Sat there for exactly one beat, perfectly balanced, tail curled around her feet, and looked down at the assembled entry hall below with the calm patience of someone who had all the time in the world.
Then she started walking the banister.
She took her time. Every step was deliberate, and the polished wood made a faint, rhythmic creak under her weight that everyone below could hear. The household staff, who had been standing in a neat professional semicircle, found better positions. Valerie moved back two feet. The white-haired manager pressed himself flat against the wall with the practiced reflex of someone who understood when it was smarter not to be in the center of things.
Victoria was the only one who didn't move. I noticed that. She had good nerves.
Duchess reached the section of banister level with where Victoria was standing on the stairs and stopped. Then she looked at her. Not a glance—the full, sustained, inventory-style gaze that Duchess reserved for situations she considered unresolved. I watched Victoria hold that eye contact for about three seconds. Then she took a step back. She misjudged the height of the step behind her, and her heel caught on the edge, and then she was going—one foot tangling with the other, her free hand reaching for the banister railing and not finding it in time—and then she wasn't on the staircase anymore.
It wasn't a long fall. It was, however, a complete one.
The entry hall erupted. Valerie moved first, crossing to the base of the stairs with the speed of a woman who understood which crises were personally relevant. Two aides materialized from somewhere I hadn't clocked. Staff converged. Arthur Vance had gone still in the entry hall doorway, one hand half-extended like he'd thought about intervening and hadn't committed to it fast enough.
Duchess finished her walk to the end of the banister, stepped back onto my shoulder with zero fanfare, and settled back into position. I leaned against the wall and watched the chaos below sort itself out.
The staff looked up at me. The ones who'd been at the back of the room and the ones who'd been standing at the front—they all looked at me. Differently than they had an hour ago. I didn't do anything about it. I just noted it.
Down below, Valerie was crouched beside Victoria, speaking in rapid undertones. Victoria was already pushing herself upright—she was fine, she was already fine, the flush on her face was fury and she was managing it correctly by pouring all available energy into not showing it. She'd be okay. She was built for recovery.
Arthur Vance looked up at me.
"Everyone saw it," I said. I wasn't loading the words with anything—just stating a fact. "My cat walked the banister. She slipped. It happens." I let my gaze move across the staff until they each found somewhere else to look. Then I looked at Arthur. "If you have something to say about that, I'm listening. Otherwise, I'm going out."
Arthur Vance said nothing.
I came down the stairs, crossed the entry hall, and put my hand on the front door. Behind me, Valerie started to say something. Then she stopped.
"Harper."
Arthur's voice. I didn't turn around.
"It's late," he said.
"I know." I opened the door. "I'll be back."
I walked out without looking at him.
The night air outside was cold and sharp and completely indifferent to everything that had just happened in that house, and I stood on the front steps for a moment and just breathed it in.
The pressure behind my eyes didn't disappear, but it loosened, just slightly, enough to matter. Upper East Side at this hour was all quiet streets and private cars and lit windows where people were doing things they didn't intend for anyone to see. Somewhere down the block, a dog was being walked by someone who looked like they were glad to have an excuse to be outside.
Same, honestly.
My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket. I pulled it out and checked the screen.
The message was sitting in my encrypted thread, marked with the three-second delivery delay that meant it had been routed through Felix's usual chain of proxies before it landed on my phone.
I glanced at it—it was a voice message.
I quickly listened to it, feeling somewhat surprised, yet not surprised at all.
Something in my chest loosened the rest of the way.
I replied with a voice message: On my way. Twenty minutes.
