THE KASTELLAN HEIR.

CHECKMATE.

"Cornflower!"

Vivienne's scream ripped through the earpiece, and Ronan was out of the SUV before the word had finished echoing.

"Go!" Sienna barked into her radio. "All units, breach the east wing! Repeat, east wing! Go, go, go!"

Guards poured from the convoy. Ronan sprinted toward the mansion's gates, heart hammering. Behind him, Sienna's boots pounded the gravel. The mansion's lights blazed above them like a wall of fire.

In the salon, Crane's fingers closed around Vivienne's throat.

"Crane," said Aldric mildly. "Gently."

"She's wired."

"Yes, I gathered." The old man rose, smoothing his lapels. "Take the pin. Break it. And bring her downstairs."

Crane wrenched the rhinestone hairpin from her twist and crushed it under his heel. A faint crackle of static, then silence.

"Too late," Vivienne gasped, clawing at his wrist. "He heard everything. Every word."

"Of course he did. That's what I wanted."

She stared at him. Even now, half-choked in a stranger's grasp, she couldn't make the pieces fit. "What?"

"You think I couldn't have found your little device an hour ago?" Aldric smiled. "I wanted the boy to listen. I wanted him to hear how his mother died. I wanted him to know I'd won." He nodded to Crane. "Release her."

Crane let go. Vivienne dropped to her knees, coughing. She wrenched a second, tiny device from the hem of her dress, a fabric-covered recorder no bigger than a button, and clutched it against her chest.

Crane frowned. "There's another."

"Search her."

But before he could move, the salon's door exploded inward.

Kastellan guards streamed into the room, weapons drawn, shouting. Crane spun, drawing his pistol, and a bullet cracked past his ear. Aldric backed toward the wall, calmly, without haste, like a man leaving a table where the game had turned dull.

"Vivienne!" Ronan skidded through the doorway. "Get down!"

She threw herself flat. The room dissolved in noise and smoke. A second shot chewed a chunk from the oak paneling. Crane fired twice and vanished through a hidden door behind the fireplace, dragging Aldric with him.

"After them!" Ronan bellowed.

"No!" Sienna caught his arm. "It's a trap. That's a bolt-hole. They'll have a car waiting."

"He killed my parents."

"And you have it recorded." She pointed. Vivienne was crawling toward them across the carpet, blood on her lip, clutching the tiny button in her fist. "This is what we came for. Take it and go."

Ronan dropped to his knees. Vivienne pressed the recorder into his palm, her fingers icy.

"I got him," she whispered. "I got him, Ronan."

"You did."

"He said it. All of it."

"You did," he repeated, and for the first time in weeks, his voice was gentle. He pulled her against him and held her there, shaking, while the guards swept the room.

In his arms, she wept. Behind them, Sienna turned away and looked out the window at the dark grounds, her jaw set.

---

In the back seat, Vivienne huddled under a blanket, teeth chattering, her eyes wide and glassy. She hadn't said a word since they'd dragged her out of the mansion. Sienna had given her water and a granola bar and, awkwardly, her own jacket, and she was staring out the window as the dark fields blurred past.

"He knew," she said at last, in a small voice. "The whole time. He wanted you to hear it."

"I know."

"Why would he do that?"

"Because he's proud," Ronan said. "Men like Aldric can't bear to win in silence."

Vivienne pressed the blanket to her mouth. "I thought he was going to kill me."

"So did I."

"You didn't look scared."

"I was terrified." He gave her a tired half smile. "I've just had a lot of practice hiding it."

She laughed, a startled, wet sound, and burst into tears. Sienna, to her own visible surprise, put an arm around her.

They were at the estate by dawn.

The convoy swept through the gates in a tight, silent line. Doors slammed. Guards fanned out. Ronan carried Vivienne, bleary and half-conscious, into the great hall and handed her to a waiting nurse.

He stood in the middle of the room with the tiny recorder cupped in his palm.

Sienna appeared at his elbow.

"I'll take that to the legal team," she said. "We'll make a dozen copies before breakfast. One for the prosecutor, one for the board, one for the press. By noon, Aldric will be a fugitive."

"Not yet," Ronan said. "Not until the board meets. We're going to need every vote."

"I'm on it." She hesitated. "Are you all right?"

He stared at the recorder. In his palm, it looked absurdly small.

"Marta," he said. "The woman who saved me. All my life I believed I was abandoned. Unwanted. And someone carried me on her back for three years, and died in a boardinghouse so that I could live." His voice cracked. "I never even knew her name."

Sienna touched his arm. She said nothing. There was nothing to say.

"I'll find her grave," he said finally. "When this is over. I'll put flowers there."

"I'll go with you."

"Thank you."

"Ronan." She smiled, a small, tired smile. "You should sleep."

"Later."

"Not later. Now." She squeezed his arm. "I'll wake you in two hours. I'm going to run this to the lab and make the calls. Stay here. Stay with the guards."

She headed for the door, briefcase in hand, the little recorder tucked safely in her pocket. Ronan watched her go with a strange, tender feeling he wasn't ready to name.

At the doorway, she turned.

"Whatever happens," she said, "I want you to know I'm glad you came home."

"Sienna..."

"Get some rest."

She was gone.

Ronan sank onto the sofa. The silver dog padded over and rested its enormous head on his knee. He scratched its ears and stared into the dying fire, exhausted, hollow, and almost, for the first time, at peace.

He was asleep in minutes.

He woke to the sound of his own phone.

The screen glowed in the gray morning light. An unknown number. A video file, thirty-one seconds long, no message.

He pressed play.

The image was grainy, shaky, the picture of a cold concrete room. A single bare bulb swung overhead. In the center of the frame, tied to a steel chair with white cord, sat Sienna.

Her lip was split. A bruise blossomed across one cheekbone. But her eyes were open, blazing, furious, and fixed on a point just off-camera.

"Ronan," she said, hoarse. "Don't..."

A gloved hand struck her across the face.

Then the camera swung, and Aldric Neville's face filled the screen, calm and pleasant and terrible, his white beard neatly combed.

"Good morning, my boy," said Aldric. "I trust you slept well. You'll find that I've borrowed something of yours."

Ronan's hands were shaking so hard the phone almost slipped.

"Every share you own in the Kastellan holdings," Aldric continued. "Signed over. Notarized. Delivered to me, in person, at the capital tower at midnight tonight. Unarmed. Alone. Not a single guard, and not a single lawyer."

The camera tilted. Sienna's blood-flecked face swam back into view.

"If you do this," Aldric said gently, "she lives. If you bring anyone else, or call anyone else, or so much as think of the police..." He shrugged. "Well. I'm told the capital tower is a very long way to fall."

The screen went black.

Ronan was standing before he realized he had moved. The recorder was gone. Sienna was gone. The fire crackled, and the world narrowed to a single point of cold, brilliant rage.

"Alfred!" he shouted. "Get me Quill. Now."