"Tell me about them."
Elowen's voice drifts across the library like smoke, soft and careful and impossibly gentle.
She sits curled in the leather armchair across from mine, a glass of wine balanced on her knee, the firelight painting gold across her features.
The Kincaid library wraps around us like a sanctuary—floor-to-ceiling shelves weighted with first editions, the particular hush of old money holding its breath.
Reginald left for Boston three hours ago, some business dinner that will keep him occupied until morning, and the house has settled into a silence that feels almost sacred.
"Tell you about whom?" I ask, though I already know the answer.
I have been waiting for this question since she first pressed her lips to mine in the garden.
"Your parents."
She takes a sip of wine, watching me over the rim with patience I don't deserve.
"You never mention them. Not once, in four years of working together, and not once since I came back into your life wearing a different name. I've told you about Margot, about my grandfather, about every wound I carry from this family. But you keep yours locked away like they're classified documents, and I want to understand why."
The fire crackles in the silence that follows. I stare into the flames, feeling the weight of years pressing against my chest like something physical.
"I don't talk about my parents," I say finally. "Ever. It's not personal, Elowen. It's survival."
"Survival from what?"
She sets down her wine glass and leans forward, her elbows resting on her knees.
"From grief? From memory? From whatever happened that made you build walls so high that even the people closest to you can't see over them?"
"From all of it."
I exhale slowly, and the sound comes out ragged, raw.
"My parents died when I was nineteen. Car accident on the coast road near the Hamptons estate. The brakes failed on a curve, and they went through the guardrail into the water below. By the time emergency services arrived, there was nothing left to save."
Elowen is quiet for a long moment.
The firelight flickers across her expression, and I watch her process the information with the same careful attention she brought to every briefing, every crisis, every impossible situation I threw at her during our years together.
"I'm sorry," she says softly. "Losing them so young must have been devastating, and I can only imagine how that shaped the woman you became. But there's something else, isn't there? Something you're not telling me, something that turns your voice cold every time Iolanthe's name comes up in conversation."
"You're too perceptive for your own good."
"You trained me to notice details, Vesper. Don't act surprised when I apply those skills to you."
The observation lands with precision, and I feel the corners of my mouth twitch despite myself.
She knows me too well.
"The official story was a tragic accident," I say, rising from my chair to cross toward the fireplace.
The heat warms my face, but the cold inside my chest remains untouched.
"Brake failure. Mechanical malfunction. The kind of random catastrophe that befalls wealthy families and generates sympathetic headlines for a week before everyone moves on to the next tragedy."
"But you don't believe the official story."
"My father wanted to break from Iolanthe's control."
I press my palm flat against the mantelpiece, feeling the smooth wood beneath my fingers.
"He had plans to restructure the company, to modernize the board, to remove her from the position she'd held for forty years. He thought legacy should evolve instead of calcify, and he was foolish enough to believe that blood would protect him from the consequences of challenging her authority."
"Vesper." Elowen's voice has dropped to barely above a whisper. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"
"I'm saying the accident was convenient."
I turn to face her, and the grief I have spent thirteen years burying claws its way toward the surface.
"Two weeks before the crash, my father told Iolanthe he intended to call a board vote to remove her as chairwoman. Three days before the crash, she visited the estate and spent an hour alone with him in his study, and when she left, his face looked like someone had carved the hope out of him with a knife."
"You think she arranged it."
The words fall from Elowen's lips like stones dropping into still water.
"You think your own grandmother murdered your parents."
"I think I will never know for certain, and that uncertainty is its own kind of torture."
I move back toward my chair, but I cannot bring myself to sit.
The restlessness in my limbs demands movement, demands action, demands anything except standing still while the memories tear me apart.
"The investigation was thorough. The brakes were examined. No evidence of tampering was found, and the case was closed within six weeks. But I learned something that day, Elowen. I learned that in this family, love is leverage. If you care about something, if you let yourself want something, Iolanthe will find a way to use it against you."
Elowen rises from her chair and crosses the space between us.
Her hand finds mine, and the warmth of her fingers sends heat flooding through my frozen chest.
"Is that why you've never let anyone in?" she asks.
The tenderness in her voice nearly undoes me.
"Is that why you built an empire on control and efficiency and refused to acknowledge that you might want something beyond quarterly projections and merger acquisitions?"
"That's why I can't lose you to her games."
The confession tears out of me before I can stop it, raw and desperate and utterly without defense.
"She's already suspicious, Elowen. She's been watching us since the engagement dinner, cataloging every interaction, every glance that lingers too long. And when she discovers the truth—not if, when—she will do whatever it takes to destroy what we're building."
"You won't lose me."
Elowen's grip tightens around my fingers, fierce and certain.
"Whatever Iolanthe throws at us, whatever schemes she's constructing behind those calculating eyes, we'll face it together. I didn't survive four years as Elle Wyeth just to crumble the moment someone powerful decides I'm inconvenient."
I want to believe her. I want to wrap myself in her certainty and let it shield me from the terror coiling in my chest.
But I have seen what Iolanthe does to threats.
I watched my father challenge her and disappear three weeks later.
I watched my mother become collateral damage in a war she never knew she was fighting.
I have spent thirteen years building walls specifically designed to ensure I would never give Iolanthe another target to aim at.
And now Elowen stands in the center of those walls, completely unaware that I have already painted a target on her back simply by loving her.
"She destroyed my parents for daring to question her authority," I say quietly, holding Elowen's gaze with everything I have. "What do you think she'll do when she discovers I've fallen in love with my brother's bride?"
Elowen's expression doesn't waver.
"Let her try."