From Valet to billionaire king

Bad news

Barnaby Whitfield's house sat on a quiet street in Beacon Hill, all brick and ivy and old money, the kind of house that made a point of looking like it had never needed to try.

Rosalind was waiting on the front steps when Edmund arrived, arms crossed against the cold. The look on her face told him more than her text had. She wasn't just anxious. She was frightened, in a way he had rarely seen from her, a careful, contained fear that already knew something was coming and hadn't found a way to stop it.

"Hey." Edmund climbed the steps and took her hands. They were freezing. "What's going on? You've been standing out here?"

"I couldn't sit inside with them." Her voice was low, urgent. "Edmund, something's wrong. Dad's been on the phone all afternoon with someone, door shut, and every time I asked he just said you'll see tonight. Mom won't look at me. There's a car in the driveway I don't recognize."

Edmund glanced at the driveway. A black sedan, sleek, engine still ticking as it cooled. The same kind of car that had picked up Aldous Vane outside The Birchwood less than an hour ago.

*He wants it settled tonight.*

"Rosalind," he said carefully, "did your father mention anyone by name? Anyone he's been talking to?"

"No. Why?" She searched his face. "You're scaring me. What is it?"

"Probably nothing." He didn't believe it even as he said it, but there was no version of *I think your father invited the man who insulted me at work tonight* that sounded sane, so he squeezed her hands instead. "Let's go in. Together."

The front door opened before they reached it. Cordelia Whitfield stood in the frame, and Edmund noticed at once that she wasn't dressed for a normal family dinner. No soft cardigan. A sharp blazer, hair set, makeup done like she was preparing for an audience rather than her own dining room.

"You're late," Cordelia said, though it was two minutes past seven.

"We're right on time," Edmund said evenly.

Cordelia's eyes moved over him the way they always did, a brief, practiced inventory that found him lacking and moved on. She stepped back to let them in without another word.

The house was too quiet. No music. No clink of glasses being set out early. Just the sound of their own footsteps on the hardwood, and beneath it, low voices from the dining room. One of them male, unfamiliar.

Rosalind's hand tightened in his.

They stepped into the dining room together, and Edmund felt the floor tilt slightly under him, the strange vertigo of a nightmare arriving in broad daylight.

Barnaby stood near the head of the table with a folder in his hands. Cordelia moved past them to stand beside him. Seated at the table, one leg crossed over the other, wearing the relaxed and proprietary ease of a man who already believed he belonged in the room, was Aldous Vane. The camel coat was gone, replaced by a dark suit, but it was unmistakably the same face from the valet stand two hours before.

Aldous looked up. Recognition moved across his face slowly, then all at once, sliding from mild curiosity into confusion, then into something sharper.

"You," he said, sitting forward. "You're the valet. From The Birchwood."

Barnaby's head turned between them, his own confusion cutting through whatever speech he'd prepared. "You two know each other?"

"He parked my car two hours ago." Aldous stood now, eyes fixed on Edmund like he was recalculating something in real time. He turned to Barnaby. "Wait. Is this Rosalind's ex-husband?"

Edmund almost corrected him on that before he caught himself. Rosalind flinched beside him.

"Yes," Barnaby said, recovering fast, waving a hand as if the coincidence were an inconvenience rather than a warning. "This is Edmund. The one I told you about."

"Told him what?" Rosalind's voice cracked across the room, sharper than Edmund had heard it in years. "Dad, what is going on? Why is he here? Why do you have a folder?"

Barnaby set the folder down on the table with a precision that made the silence afterward feel enormous.

"Sit down," he said. "Both of you. It's time we talked about your future."