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For the rest of the drive, the only sound is the occasional rhythmic clicking of the turn signal and the sound of rain on the windows as the city swallows us whole.
29
ISABELLA
It's pitch-black, save for the streetlights, their reflections looking like oil slicks on the wet pavement. Sebastian's childhood home looms out of the darkness, the limestone facade rising above us like a tombstone. Most of the houses on the Upper East Side are large, but I'm pretty sure this is one of the largest.
As Sebastian works his way through the home security system, I take in the five-story townhouse that doesn't just sit on the block. It claims it. If I didn't know which house was Julian King's, I'm confident I would have guessed this one first.
“Come on.” Sebastian punches a final number, then opens the heavy oak door.
“Are you sure about this?” I ask, hoping he can hear my whisper over the sound of the pounding rain. “I feel like we're breaking in.”
“This was my home, too.” There's a note of defensiveness in his voice, and I don't know whether it's for me or for his absent father, who is apparently at the estate in Greenwich, even as his sons struggle to keep his empire from crumbling. “And if someone asks,” Sebastian continues, “we can say we're getting something my mother left behind.”
I think about everything Eleanor King revealed to me during our conversation in her greenhouse among her prize flowers, everything she expressed with words, and everything she didn’t.
I've thought about it a lot in quiet moments, turning her lesson over and over in my head. She has been betrayed, and so have I, and I wonder what that says about my attraction to Sebastian. I hope nothing at all. I hope with all my heart that he is not his father's son.
But I can't help but worry. I can't help but look for signs so that I can protect myself. Even on the drive here, I tried to convince myself that Sebastian is telling the truth, that he has absolutely nothing to do with any of this, that someone really is trying to frame him. But how well do I really know this man? The truth is I don't. Sleeping with someone doesn't give you magical insight into their deepest, darkest secrets, to the innermost part of themselves. It would be terrifyingly easy for Sebastian to pretend to be what he thinks I want, only to cover the monster lurking inside.
“What if one of the staff finds us? Is your mom really going to ask for something in your father's study?”
“No one's here right now.”
The silence in the house is oppressive as our footsteps echo in the foyer. It feels like it's an abandoned home, where no one has been living for some time. Julian’s presence haunts the halls like a ghost. I want to feel bad for him, but I can’t, because I've seen the wreckage he's left behind in the ones he's supposed to love and care for.
Sebastian leads me up the grand staircase to the third floor and down a hallway studded with famous, expensive artwork. He stops in front of a pair of double doors made of dark polished wood and hesitates.
His hand hovers over the brass knobs. I can't see his face in the dark, and I wonder whether he's hesitant about what we're going to do, or what we're going to find.
“He called this the war room when I was a kid,” Sebastian says, his voice low. A lightning flash lights up the hallway, and for a heartbeat, I swear it reveals the scared boy he once was before the rumble of answering thunder dislodges the illusion. “He used to call me in here for performance reviews, which were never positive.”
“Performance reviews for work?” I whisper, confused as to why they didn't just do it at the office.
“No.” Sebastian snorts a laugh, but it's a bitter sound without any amusement to it. “After report cards came out, or anytime I wasn't living up to his standards, whether it was at lacrosse, who I was dating, or if he thought I'd been caught blowing off steam in a fucking gossip column.”
I have no idea what to say to that. I don't have any more time to think about it either, because Sebastian pushes the doors open.
The room is just as I imagined it. It’s enormous and lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes I doubt anyone reads; the gold lettering on the spines looks too pristine.
A massive desk sits at the far end, positioned so that anyone entering will feel like they're approaching a throne. Behind the desk is a portrait of a man who looks vaguely like Sebastian. His grandfather, if I had to guess. The old man's eyes are painted with a terrifying, lifelike clarity that seems to track our every move.
There is an oil portrait of Julian hung on the opposite wall across from his desk, where he can see himself. Seeing the positioning of his portrait explains a lot.
“Feels like we're entering a mausoleum,” I mutter, staying close to Sebastian.
“That's the point: architecture and design as psychological warfare. It's my father's specialty,” he replies.
His movements are stiff as he walks across the room. He looks smaller, the confident billionaire I know stripped away to reveal the boy who was never quite good enough for the man whose presence dominates this space.
Once at the desk, he leans down and presses a hidden catch on the side. A panel slides back, revealing a sleek, high-end terminal, a jarringly modern piece of tech in a room that looks like a nineteenth-century library.
“He keeps his personal ledger on here,” Sebastian explains. “But the terminal connects to the primary household server. If the payment to the DOJ official came from any of the family trusts, the breadcrumbs will be here.”
Sebastian has the Ghost on the line. “Okay. Take the bypass cable and plug it into the terminal’s maintenance port.”
From my purse, I pull out the cable the hacker instructed us to buy and hand it to Sebastian. As soon as he connects it, the screen lights up with strings of green code in the dialogue box.
