Jerome watched her for a moment, his mouth curling up into an amused smile."Let me guess," he said, "it's from Nicholas Belford?""Yes…" Nora began to answer, then she caught the smirk on his face and her scowl deepened."What are you wearing that look for?" she demanded."Nothing much," he replied. "It's just that you seem… close, to the Belford heir.""I don't think I like what you're suggesting," Nora retorted.Jerome lifted an eyebrow, as if he had no idea what she could possibly be insinuating."What is it that you think I'm suggesting?" he asked."You know what," Nora snapped.She was in no mood for mind games.And why was everybody being like this all of a sudden? First Natalie, now Jerome.When did Jerome even start to care about things like this?"Where's Mike?" she asked, hoping to distract him from this stupid topic.The teenage boy was a bit of a nuisance most of the time, but Nora wouldn't have minded having him around at the moment.If he was crawling all over her with

High Mother moved to stand, but Nicholas's cold words stopped her in her tracks."Sit down," he said. "We're not done talking."High Mother seemed to forget that she was supposed to be expressionless, and her eyebrows rose up almost to her forehead in surprise."What did you say?" she muttered in a quiet, menacing voice.Nicholas watched her, his eyes daring her to disobey. After a moment, she settled back into her seat and gave him one of her icy looks."I've heard a lot about you, Nicholas Belford," she said. "So far, everything I've heard is proving to be correct. You're a disrespectful, arrogant brat, who thinks that he's patriarch material just because he joined the Belford family like two minutes ago. And yet, despite being the worst of scum, you somehow believe you're superior to everyone else. Superior enough to have morals, to declare yourself some sort of ethical murderer. Well, then. Let's see if there's anything to your stupid values or if they're just empty words like eve

Most people assumed that the reason Nora was one of the best agents High Mother's orphanage had ever produced, was due to her intelligence and combat skills. And while they weren't entirely wrong, nobody else knew about her greatest weapon: her intuition. When her gut told her something, it was never wrong. And right now, her gut was telling her Nicholas was hiding something from her.Something huge.Even worse, it had all begun that day he went to the orphanage.'Did the High Mother say something to him?' she wondered. 'Something about me?'But no, that couldn't be it.While she didn't doubt that High Mother was the type to do such a thing, even out of spite, she didn't think that Nicholas would continue to let her hang around if he knew with certainty that she wasn't truly on his side. Which had to mean that he was suspecting her. Somehow, he had found out about her ties to the orphanage, and the trust he had for her had weakened.Nora knew that she couldn't have that. This whole mi

High Mother had been certain that she would be prepared, if Nicholas ever got it into his head to attack her. Despite what she had said to Jerome, she wasn't actually so indifferent about the prospect of Nicholas coming to take revenge on her. She had doubled her security, increased the surveillance, and sent out shoot on sight orders to every soul in her house.In the end, it still wasn't enough.If it was, she wouldn't be standing in her room right now, listening to her two closest guards tell her that she had to escape."He has almost taken over the entire mansion," one of them was saying. "He'll be here soon. You have to leave, High Mother. You're not safe here."High Mother gritted her teeth. The last thing she wanted to do was run away from her own house just because of that brat, but she knew she had no choice."Fine," she said. "But I will make him pay for embarrassing me like this."There was a trapdoor hidden at the back of her walk-in closet, which had been designed specifi

"What do you know about Harold?" Nicholas asked.Nora glanced at him, surprised. It was shocking enough that he had summoned her after keeping her away from his business for so long. Now he was actually asking for her help with something?"Not much," she replied. "A lot of Harold's power relies on the fact that no one really knows anything about him. He's mysterious and unpredictable. That's what makes him more dangerous than any of the other founding fathers.""Well, I'm going to need you to find out everything you can about him," Nicholas said. "You can do that, can't you?"'What a tone,' Nora thought.But she saw this interaction for what it was: a test. Nicholas was testing her loyalty with this task.For a moment, Nora wanted to laugh.Nicholas was very clever for coming up with this. She couldn't deny that. Months of working for him had made it easy for her to predict his thought pattern. Since he suspected that she was affiliated with High Mother's orphanage, he probably also s