The armchair had never been particularly comfortable. Val had sat in it for the better part of an hour anyway, fingers laced, staring at the middle distance while the problem arranged and rearranged itself in his mind until the solution presented itself with the clean, satisfying logic of a lock finding its key.
Michael wanted the marriage. Michael wanted the title. Michael had, with considerable patience and no small amount of cunning, positioned himself to receive both , and had done it by using Val's own actions as the shovel to dig the grave.
Elegant, Val thought, without admiration. But not elegant enough.
He straightened in the chair and looked across the room to where Jeremy sat at the table, working through a stack of papers with the focused diligence of a man trying very hard not to think about the events of the past twenty-four hours.
"Where are the rings?"
Jeremy looked up. Blinked. Then understanding moved across his face like a cloud crossing the sun. "They're in your father's office. In the desk." He set his pen down slowly. "Why?"
Val's mouth curved. Not warmly. "I need you to spread a rumor."
"What kind of rumor?"
"That Valentino Varkis and the daughter of the Draven family held a small private ceremony before arriving at Varkis territory." He watched Jeremy's face. "It was Quiet and Informal." Jeremy was quiet for a moment. "That didn't happen."
"Which is precisely why I need you to spread it." Val rose from the chair in one smooth motion. "The Dravens hear it, it holds. That's sufficient for now. And I'll need marriage documents prepared. Credible ones and send them over to the Draven's estate."
"But Master." Jeremy's voice had taken on the particular careful quality it got when he was about to say something he knew wouldn't be received well and was going to say it anyway. "When she wakes up, she'll deny it. After everything that happened in the Silver District, I don't think she'll be inclined toward,"
"She'll accept it." The certainty in his voice was absolute, not because he had worked out the details of how yet, but because the alternative was not a category he was willing to entertain. "Once the family heirloom is on her finger and the other is on mine, there isn't a person in this house positioned to dispute it. Not even my father." He moved toward the door. "And certainly not Michael."
Jeremy opened his mouth. Closed it again. Nodded once.
Val walked out.
The hallway received him the way hallways in the Varkis mansion always received him , people found reasons to be elsewhere. A maid carrying linens turned sharply into the nearest doorway the moment she registered his stride. A footman polishing the side table straightened and dropped his gaze to the floor before Val had covered half the distance between them. Nobody spoke. Nobody made eye contact. They simply adjusted their trajectory and hoped they hadn't been noticed doing it.
He moved through all of it without acknowledgment, without slowing, heading toward his father's office at the end of the east wing with the unhurried certainty of a man who had already decided how the next ten minutes would go.
His father was at the dam. Two hours minimum. Usually three.
The window was sufficient.
Both guards outside the office door saw him coming from the far end of the corridor and he watched the calculation happen on their faces in real time , the recognition, the assessment, the decision to hold their ground anyway because they had been given an order and abandoning it the moment the wrong person appeared would cost them more than facing him would.
He almost respected it.
The nearer one stepped forward as he reached the door, one hand raised, chin up, committing to it fully. "Master has given strict,"
Val didn't stop walking.
His hand closed around the guard's outstretched wrist, and he redirected the man's own momentum, twisting the arm inward and downward in one smooth, continuous motion that took less than two seconds and required almost no force at all, just the application of leverage to a joint that was not designed to travel in that direction. The sound it made was small and dense. The guard's legs buckled instantly, a full collapse, his free hand slapping the floor as he went down with a choked sound that he was clearly trying to keep quiet and failing.
Val held the arm at its limit for a single, additional moment, long enough to be a statement, then released it and looked at the second guard. "Don't stand in my way." He hissed.
The second guard looked at his colleague on the floor. Then back at Val.
He moved aside. Val opened the door.
The office was dark, curtains drawn against the afternoon. He went straight to the desk and tried the top drawer without bothering to check if the room was empty first; it was, he knew it was, and found it locked.
He straightened. Looked at the desk. Looked at the shelves.
He moved to the bookcase and worked along the upper row methodically, dragging volumes forward an inch and releasing them, checking the gaps behind. Nothing. He checked behind the inkwell. Behind the figurine on the desk corner. He pulled open the shallow surface drawer, pens, correspondence seals, a folded letter he didn't look at, and found nothing that was a key.
He checked the side cabinet. Locked as well.
His jaw tightened.
He turned back, looking at the room entirely at once, giving out a frustrated breath, the contained fury of a man who did not have time for this. Then he drove his foot hard into the lower panel, a single sharp crack of boot against wood, and immediately felt the impact jar up through his shin and into the wounds on his chest that had not finished healing and very much objected to the vibration.
Something small skittered across the floorboards.
He looked down. A small plain key was lying two feet from the desk, where it had been shaken loose from wherever it had been fixed to the underside. He crouched, picked it up, turned it once in his fingers, and felt the specific quiet satisfaction of a problem that had just resolved itself.
He unlocked the drawer.
The velvet box sat at the back; it was the kind of container that didn't advertise what was inside because it didn't need to. He lifted it, unlatched it.
The rings sat in dark, old, heavy velvet. They had been passed down through enough hands to accumulate meaning beyond their material value. He had seen them his entire life and had always understood, on some level, that they represented something he would either inherit or lose.
He reached for them. His eyes caught the photograph beneath the box.
It was worn, not with neglect, but with the opposite of neglect. The edges had softened from handling, the surface faded to that particular sepia that meant years rather than months. In the poor light, he could make out the figure of a woman. The shape of the face was not very familiar, but she was wearing a qipao with a flower stuck behind her ear. She had a serene look to her face; a moment in the picture made him remember the woman who had shot her, and he frowned.
In that moment from outside, he heard the unmistakable sound of a car on the drive returning earlier than scheduled.
Val lifted the rings clear, dropped the box back into the drawer over the photograph, and pushed it shut. The key went skidding back under the desk with the side of his shoe. He turned, picked up the nearest book from the shelf, he didn't register the title, it didn't matter because it was for the sake of an act he was about to do, and walked out of the office at the same pace he had entered.
The guard was still on the floor as he passed, cradling his wrist, face turned away.
Val rounded the corner, and his expression had settled back into its default by the time he did, unhurried, unreadable, faintly bored with everything the world was currently offering him. In his jacket pocket, the rings pressed solid and certain against his ribs, and the book he had lifted from the shelf swung loosely from his left hand.
He saw William before William saw him.
His father was moving through the hallway at a pace that had nothing casual about it,
William's eyes found him and stopped.
The two of them regarded each other across the length of the corridor for a moment.
"Father." Val lifted the book slightly, a lazy, almost careless gesture. "I hope you don't mind me borrowing something from your study. I've been looking for this one for a while." He offered the faint curve of a smile that communicated clearly that he knew William wasn't convinced and found that entirely acceptable.
William's gaze moved from Val's face to the book to the direction Val had come from, and back again. His eyes narrowed by a fraction.
"The woman is being discharged from the hospital," he said instead, shifting to the matter at hand.
"She'll be kept in the mansion until the situation is resolved and further complications can be avoided."
Val tilted his head slightly. "You mean my wife."
"I made no mention of giving my blessing to any marriage," William said, his voice carrying the particular clipped quality it got when he was delivering something he considered final.
"No, you didn't." Val's tone was perfectly pleasant. "It must have slipped my mind yesterday to inform you, but the ceremony has already taken place. The Draven family has been notified accordingly, so I'm not entirely certain whose blessing would be required at this point." He held his father's gaze for a beat, then tucked the book under his arm and moved to step past him. "I'll expect all unrelated parties to be kept away from my wife's side from now on. I'd hate for anything else to go wrong in her care." He paused just long enough for that last sentence to land precisely where he intended it. "I'm sure you understand."
He walked past without waiting for a response.
William stood in the corridor and did not move. Joshua materialized at William's shoulder, as he always did, as though he had simply always been standing there.
William's eyes stayed on the far end of the corridor where Val had disappeared. "Did you hear what he said?"
"Yes, Master."
A pause. "Confirm it."
Joshua dipped his head once and turned without another word.