Page 6 of The Heir's Defiance

Inside, I head straight upstairs, past the empty parlor, past the kitchen where the lights are off, into my room. The door shuts behind me with a soft click. I throw the shoes into the corner, peel the suit jacket off, and toss it across the bed. The blouse clings to my skin, damp at the back from the tension of the day, but I’m halfway to pulling it over my head when the door slams open without warning.

My father stands there, shoulders stiff, face tight with the kind of anger that demands answers. His eyes are wide and he sways a little, indicating just how many drinks he's had since the lecture he gave me this afternoon.

"Who was there?" he snaps, stepping into the room like he owns it.

I don’t move. I finish pulling the blouse over my head and throw it aside before answering. “The ones you'd expect. O’Rourkes, Byrnes, a few freelancers trying not to look scared.” I ignore his scowl as I walk to my dresser and pull out a soft T-shirt. I'll have to wait to remove the skirt, and that annoys me more than being grilled by my father.

He crosses the room fast, stopping only when he’s close enough that I can smell the whiskey. "Names," he says. "Conversations. Who spoke to whom."

"They buried a fence," I say, folding my arms across my chest. "They didn’t hand out secrets with the tea." I didn't realize I was supposed to be taking names. I'm not a part of my father's world in any definition of the word. And I don't want to be. Volkov was the last straw for me.

He stares at me like he's weighing how much he can push before I let my temper flare. "Don't play smart with me," he says, voice lower now, worse than yelling. "We needed information."

"And sending me was the way to get it?" I ask, keeping my voice flat. "You think they’re going to open up because I wore a skirt and smiled?" I scoff and try to walk away, and he grabs my arm hard, squeezing my bicep so tightly that I yelp.

"You were supposed to observe," he says. "Report. Prove you’re not dead weight."

I tilt my head slightly. "Maybe next time, send someone they actually trust." I pry his right hand from my arm. His left hand twitches at his side, the same way it did when I was a kid and hadn't yet learned when to keep my mouth shut. He holds it back, barely.

"They'll think we’re weak," he mutters. "The Russians already think we’re bleeding out."

I say nothing. There’s no good answer, and he knows it. I wasn't told to gather information, and I don't know seventy-five percent of the people who were there. It's frustrating to think I could be punished for not telling him things I have no way of knowing.

He steps back, raking a hand through his thinning hair, turning the fury inward for a second before slamming it back into the walls.

"You gave me nothing," he says.

"I gave you what there was," I answer, but I’m trembling inside now. Da has never been violent with me, but he seems unhinged, like my refusing Artur ignited a fire he can't quench. He's drunk and desperate, and I don't know how to take that.

"You think standing there like a goddamn statue makes you valuable?" His eyes are bulging now, but I don’t have any answers now that I didn’t have before.

"I think not making it worse is the best you’re going to get," I say.

The words hang there, the air stretching tight around them. For a second, I think he might hit me after all. But he doesn’t. He just points toward the door like he’s too disgusted to look at me anymore.

"Get dressed," he says. "And next time…" His voice drops to a knife’s edge. "Next time, remember you're not here to look pretty. You're here to serve." He stomps to the door and slams it behind himself as he leaves hard enough to rattle the frame.

I stand in the center of the room for a long minute, breathing in the anger until it settles into something colder. Then I tug on some sweat pants and cross to the window to open it. The night air cuts clean across my skin.

He didn’t send me to pay respects. That much is obvious now. He sent me to dig. He sent me to gather what I could, to gauge reactions and bring back something he could use—information, tension, anything that might hint at weakness or unrest. But I didn’t give him what he wanted. I gave nothing. Which, in this family, is the same as failure.

I don't move for a long moment, just breathe in the cold that’s settled into the room. Then I walk over and reach under the bed and pull out the bottle of wine I stashed weeks ago. The cork is already out, and it’s still half full, more than enough for what I need. I don’t bother with a glass.

My feet are bare as I cross the room and slide out the open window. The roof is just low enough of a pitch to climb out onto. I ease onto the stone ledge, and the night air hits harder than I expect, sharp against my bare arms. The rooftop overlooks the western slope of the estate—gardens we don’t use, hedges that are meticulously trimmed each spring. I tuck my knees to my chest and drink straight from the bottle. The wine goes down rough, but it settles the noise in my chest.

I’m not shaken by what my father said. I’m shaken by what Connor didn’t. He's supposed to be cold steel. Controlled. Brutal. Calculating. And he was, kind of—but not in the way Iexpected. There was a steadiness to him, not loud or forceful, but deliberate in every movement and word. Like he measured every word before releasing it, like silence was part of his vocabulary. And somehow, without saying a single thing I could name, he left me feeling like something had already shifted. And I hated that. I hated that it stuck.

I close my eyes, and a memory from when I was sixteen comes back like a bruise under the skin. My father’s voice, half-drunk and careless. “She’ll make a fine bargaining chip one day. Pretty. Quiet when she needs to be.” I was standing just outside the study, barefoot, holding a glass of water.

I remember the sting in my chest more than the words themselves. I remember swearing, right then and there, that no one would ever own me. Not like that, because that’s what they saw me as—just another asset. A daughter, yes, but more importantly, a tool. A name to move, a favor to trade, a piece to place on the board when it suited them.

And then came Artur, smug and soulless, reeking of cologne and expectation. He put his hand on my back the first time we met, leaned in close, and told me I’d be safe once I was ‘properly’ his. He did not call me his wife. He did not call me his partner. He called me his possession. My father stood by the window, watching us, smiling like he'd just bought a boat.

I wanted to set the whole room on fire.

I take another drink, wiping the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand. The wine does nothing to dull it. The phone buzzes once where it rests beside me on the slate rooftop . I pick it up, thumb hovering over the screen. I scroll, flipping through images I forgot I still had—family functions, dinners, black-and-white security stills I screenshotted and saved for no reason.

Then I stop. A new message sits in my inbox, sent from Callum. There is no text attached to the message. It is only an image. It’s a blurry photo, angled too high, like it was taken in a hurry. Me on the church patio, Connor standing just beside me, mid-turn like he’s about to leave. We aren't touching. We aren't even looking at each other.

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