Chapter 3 - Nineteen Days in the Woods
Vincent did not scream. He did not slam his fists on the counter. Rage, in Vincent Calder, was never loud; it was freezing cold, deliberate, and terrifyingly patient.
He walked over to the marble island, pulled out a high leather barstool, and sat down. He leaned his elbows on the counter, clasped his hands loosely, and looked at Nora with eyes that felt like twin gun barrels.
“Four years,” he said. The words fell into the empty room like lead sinkers dropped into deep water.
Nora took a slow, deliberate breath, forcing her spine straight. The submissive housekeeper posture melted away, replaced by the stubborn, defiant survivor who had once dared to tell him his eight-hundred-dollar whiskey tasted like burning furniture.
“Three years, eleven months,” Nora corrected quietly, setting the heavy laundry basket down on a nearby stainless-steel table. “If we’re being accurate.”
Vincent let out a short, humorless breath through his nose. “You cut your hair.”
“It’s easier to manage.”
“You lost weight.”
“Raising a child alone on minimum wage will do that to a woman, Vincent.”
His jaw tightened at the sound of his first name. It was the first time anyone had spoken it aloud in Calder House without attaching a title or trembling with deference in nearly a decade.
“You walked out of my safehouse on a Tuesday morning,” Vincent said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, gravelly register. “I left an envelope with fifty thousand dollars on the nightstand. I left two private phone numbers that rang directly to my pocket. When I returned that evening, the money was still there. The numbers were shredded in the trash. And you were gone.”
“Because the danger was over,” Nora said, holding his gaze without blinking. “The men from Albany were dead or behind bars. You protected me, and I was grateful. But I didn't belong in your world, Vincent. I never did.”
“You belonged wherever I decided you were safe!” The sudden burst of volume cracked through the kitchen like a whip. Vincent instantly caught himself, smoothing his expression back into an icy veneer, though the muscle jumping in his clenched jaw betrayed the fury beneath. “I tore Albany apart looking for you. I had men searching bus depots from Syracuse to Portland. You vanished off the face of the earth.”
“I had to.”
Vincent stood up slowly, rounding the island with deliberate, predatory steps until he stood barely two feet away from her. The familiar scent of him—cedarwood, expensive tobacco, and rain—washed over Nora, threatening to pull her back into the nineteen days that had rewritten her entire existence.
“Why are you in my house, Nora?” he demanded softly. “Why are you scrubbing my floors in a servant’s uniform? Are you working for someone? Did Salieri send you?”
Nora recoiled as if he had struck her across the face. Pain, sharp and indignant, flared in her chest. “Do you really think so little of me? After everything we shared in that cabin? You think I’m an assassin or a spy?”
“I think people don't magically appear in my kitchen four years later with a child who looks like my mirror image unless there is a play being made,” Vincent snapped, his eyes flashing with dark suspicion. “Who does she belong to, Nora?”
Nora felt the tears threatening to spill, hot and furious, behind her eyelids. She swallowed them down, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her break.
“She belongs to me,” Nora whispered fiercely. “She has only ever belonged to me.”
May you like
Vincent closed the remaining distance between them until his chest was inches from hers. He looked down into her defiant eyes, his breathing heavy, his gaze burning with an intensity that made the room feel starved of oxygen.
“Don't lie to me,” Vincent growled, his voice a ragged whisper. “I saw her chin. I saw the way she stands. Look me in the eye and tell me she isn't mine.”
