From Valet to billionaire king

The order

Edmund didn't sleep. By six the next morning he was standing in Percival's kitchen with his coat already on, keys in hand, his mind made up in a way that didn't leave room for anyone to talk him out of it.

"I'm going back," he said.

Percival looked up from his coffee, alarm moving fast across his face. "Edmund, Beatrix said to let the letters do the work. Showing up at that door yourself is exactly what Barnaby wants. It gives him a story. A desperate son in law banging on the door at dawn."

"I don't care what story it gives him." Edmund's voice was flat, exhausted past the point of caring how it sounded. "She is up there right now, locked in a room in a house full of people who don't love her the way they claim to. I am not going to sit in this kitchen drinking coffee while that happens."

Percival didn't try to stop him again. He grabbed his own coat instead. "Then I'm coming with you."

The drive to Beacon Hill felt shorter than it should have, the city still gray and half asleep, the Whitfield house exactly as dark and closed off as it had been the night before. Edmund climbed the front steps two at a time and knocked hard, the same door he had been dragged away from less than twelve hours earlier.

Nobody answered.

He knocked again, harder, and called Rosalind's name up at the windows, not caring anymore who heard him or what it looked like from the street.

The door across the street opened instead, a neighbor Edmund didn't recognize watching him with open curiosity, and somewhere behind the Whitfield house's darkened windows, a curtain shifted, just slightly, and fell still again.

A car pulled up along the curb a few minutes later, not the Whitfields', a plain sedan, and a man in a gray suit stepped out with a folder under his arm and the unhurried manner of someone who did this for a living.

"Edmund Thorne?" the man asked.

"Who's asking?"

"I've been retained by the Whitfield family." The man held out the folder without waiting for permission. "You've been served."

Edmund stared at him, then at the folder, a cold, sinking dread settling into his stomach even before he opened it.

"Served with what?"

"A temporary restraining order," the man said, "filed this morning, barring you from the property at this address and from any direct contact with Rosalind Whitfield pending a hearing. The filing alleges a pattern of erratic and aggressive behavior toward the family, including an incident two nights ago that several witnesses are prepared to describe under oath."

"That's a lie." Edmund's hands were shaking now, the folder gripped too tight in his fist. "I was the one dragged out of that house. I was the one thrown down the front steps."

"I wouldn't know anything about that, sir. I'm only here to deliver the papers." The man was already turning back toward his car. "I'd advise you to have your own counsel review it before you do anything further. Approaching the property again before the hearing would not be in your interest."

He drove off, leaving Edmund standing on the sidewalk with the folder open in his hands, rereading the same paragraph three times before the words fully landed. *Erratic and aggressive behavior.* Barnaby's name on the filing. Cordelia's name beside it as a supporting witness. Aldous Vane's name listed as a third witness, ready, apparently, to testify to something Edmund had never done.

"They're evil," Percival muttered, reading over his shoulder, disbelief and fury tangled in his voice. "They had you thrown down the front steps and then filed a restraining order claiming you were the aggressor."

"They knew exactly what this would look like," Edmund said slowly, the shape of it settling into place even through his anger. "A valet, showing up at a rich family's home, refusing to leave. Nobody looks twice at that story. Nobody asks who threw the first punch."

He looked up at the house one last time, at the dark windows, at the curtain that had shifted and gone still, and felt something in his chest harden into a resolve colder and steadier than the anger that had gotten him out of bed that morning.

"Then we do this the right way," he said. "Beatrix. The board. Whatever it takes. I am not giving them another excuse to call me the villain in this."

Percival put a hand on his shoulder, grim and steady. "Then let's get you back to the house. There's a great deal of work still ahead of us before Thursday, and now we know exactly what kind of fight this is."