Chapter 1 Chapter 1

“Eleanor, look—the cute puppy’s drinking milk from his mother’s tts,” Beatrice said, pointing toward the kennel with the glee of a woman who’d just cracked the Da Vinci code of joy. Then, rubbing her collarbone with theatrical longing, she sighed, “I wish some hot, handsome grandpa would do that to my tts.”

I nearly swallowed my tongue.

Same sister. Same unholy blend of aristocratic poise and gutter-mouthed fantasy. I bit my cheek.

Stay composed, Eleanor, but my grin betrayed me instantly.

“Madam!” I gasped, feigning outrage, voice booming with mock scandal. “That’s wildly inappropriate!”

I leaned in, lowering my voice to a velvet whisper. “But between us?… I wouldn’t exactly object to a little… worship.”

I shook my head, laughing under my breath. This woman, she'd kill me with laughter if the Sterlings didn’t slit my throat first.

For one soft moment, I let myself watch the puppy burrow into its mother’s warmth.

Strange, how something so innocent could spark such deliciously filthy daydreams.

Then—quiet.

Not the gentle hush of the English countryside. No. This was American silence: engineered, expensive, loaded.

The kind bought with motion sensors, encrypted comms, and three hundred acres of private wilderness. A palace built to feel like a prison.

I stood on the terrace, the starched cuff of my maid’s uniform scratching my wrist like a lie. The whole outfit felt like a costume stolen from a ghost—too clean, too quiet, too obedient.

Before me, the Sterling Estate rose like a shard of obsidian: all glass and steel, brutalist and beautiful, jutting from Virginia’s green hills like a threat wrapped in silk.

The air carried cut grass, distant pine… and beneath it all, that sharp, sterile tang of new money—the kind that smells like power and bleach.

My fingers tightened around the silver tea set—solid, real, worth more than my entire childhood. It grounded me.

“It wasn’t ambition that doomed the Romans, Eleanor,” Beatrice said, her voice slicing through the stillness like a letter opener through skin. “Nor their legions.

It was their administration. One can conquer the world—but filing it? That’s the true art.”

I turned, smile already in place: placid, polished, perfect.

She sat ramrod straight in her wicker throne, white hair coiled into a chignon so tight it looked painful. Her face was a map drawn in steel—no laughter lines, only the grooves of control and cunning.

The emerald at her throat? Big as a quail’s egg. Green as poison.

“Quite right, Madam,” I said, my voice smooth, neutral, trained. I poured the tea in a flawless amber arc.

“An empire built on parchment outlasts one built on sand.”

Her hawk eyes flickered toward me. A spark. Approval? Or just curiosity about how deep the mimicry went?

“Exactly,” she murmured.

“The sword carves the space. The pen draws the borders. Milk, no sugar, darling.”

“Of course.”

I set the cup down with a whisper-quiet click.

This was our dance. She spoke in parables of power.

I played the clever little sparrow—just bright enough to be useful, never enough to be dangerous.

As I stepped back, eyes lowered, my mind catalogued everything: two guards patrolling the tree line, synchronized, jackets tailored to hide the weight of holsters. A third perched on the guesthouse balcony—sunlight glinting off the scope of a rifle. Cameras everywhere, black domes like watchful beetles with red eyes.

More surveillance than Gitmo, I thought blandly.

And yet the hydrangeas are still dying. Funny, that.

My chest clenched.

This place killed them.

The memory surged: London rain slick on cobblestones, the coppery stink of gunpowder, the hollow space where my father’s onyx paperweight used to sit on his desk.

I shoved it all down—into the iron vault where I kept my ghosts. No room for grief. Not today. Not ever.

Only the mission.

But then—

The air thickened. The guards tensed. Even the birds went quiet.

A deep, guttural growl tore through the silence—the kind of engine that doesn’t just arrive… it claims.

A blacked-out Porsche 911 Turbo S glided onto the crushed gravel drive, sleek as a predator, silent as a threat.

My breath caught in my throat.

The door opened.

He stepped out.

Alexander Sterling.

Taller than in the files.Sharper.

He unfolded from the car like a blade from its sheath—every movement precise, effortless, lethal.

His suit was an armour. His white shirt was open just enough to show the hollow at the base of his throat. Hair cropped close, jaw carved from marble.

Handsome? Yes. But with the kind of beauty that warned you: Don’t touch. Don’t look too long. Don’t survive.

They called him The Ghost.

My Ghost.

The man who signed the order that ended my parents.

He strode toward the terrace, the ground itself seeming to bow beneath his boots.

“Beatrice,” he said, no title, no warmth.

Just two syllables, clean as a gunshot.

She didn’t flinch. “You’re late. Tea’s getting cold.”

“A minor issue with a business partner,” he said, voice low, rough as gravel under tyres. “Resolved.”

Then, his eyes swept past her and landed on me.

Not a glance. A cold clinical scan.

Like I was a lamp, a chair, a flaw in the marble floor. Present. Useful. Disposable.

A shiver raced down my spine.

I made myself smaller, eyes fixed on the tray, heart hammering against my ribs.

David—his consigliere, twitchy as a startled rabbit—materialized from the house, tablet clutched like a lifeline. “Alec, sorry to interrupt, but the Ivanov situation… It’s escalating.”

Alec didn’t sit. Didn’t blink. “How?”

“They’ve moved three crews into the port.

Pressuring dockworkers. Making demands on customs—the ones we pay.”

“Your recommendation?”

David swallowed hard. “Hit back. Hard. Marco’s team is ready. We go in tonight—make an example.”

I froze. Idiot.

Ivanov wasn’t testing strength—he was baiting a trap. Go in loud, and you hand him the moral high ground and the FBI’s full attention.

Alec was silent. Watching the trees. Thinking.

“A show of strength, David? Or a show of stupidity?”

David paled.

I took a silent step forward to collect Beatrice’s empty cup—just as David jerked back in panic.

His elbow clipped the edge of my tray.

The silver spoon teetered.

Clatter.

It hit the stone like a pistol shot.

Every head snapped toward me.

Even his.

Alexander’s gaze locked onto mine—really saw me for the first time, and in that split second, something flickered in his steel-grey eyes.

Not recognition.

Curiosity

Then his nostrils flared, just slightly, as if catching a scent in the air.

He smells my perfume.

The one my mother wore.

The one I only put on today… because I needed to remember who I was.

His eyes narrowed. Just a fraction.

And for the first time since I walked through these gates…

I was seen.