Luna POV
I did not sleep.
I lay in my childhood bed. I had stayed at my father's house after the funeral because I could not face my empty apartment, and I stared at the ceiling with the letter on my chest and the photograph face down on the nightstand because I could not look at it again.
The woman with the silver eyes and white hair who looked exactly like me.
My father's first line: They already know what you are.
What I am.
Not who. What.
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes until I saw spots. I needed to sleep. The official will-reading was at nine in the morning, and I needed to have my brain working and my face together and my feelings locked in a box somewhere very small and very far away.
I did not sleep at all.
Gerald Park's office was on the fourth floor of a building downtown that smelled like old paper and carpet cleaner. The waiting room had stiff chairs and a coffee machine that made a sound like it was suffering.
I got there at eight fifty-five.
Caden was already there.
Of course he was.
He was standing near the window with a coffee cup in his hand that I was willing to bet he had not taken a single sip from. His eyes found me the second I walked through the door, and that careful, closed expression dropped over his face like a curtain coming down.
I looked away first.
Again.
I took the chair farthest from him, put my bag on my lap, and looked at the wall.
Eli was there too, seated and relaxed in the way only people who are very disciplined can fake. He gave me a small, warm smile. I tried to return it. I probably looked like a person attempting to smile for the first time.
Two other people sat at the table, whom I did not recognize. Gerald had mentioned something about witnesses. I had stopped listening around the third sentence.
Gerald came in at exactly nine and sat down and opened his folder and cleared his throat with the energy of a man who had delivered bad news so many times it had become simply a task like any other.
"Thank you all for being here," he began. "Marcus Reyes was thorough in his preparations. The official estate of the house, accounts, and personal property passes to his daughter, Luna Reyes, in full. The details are in the packet in front of you."
I looked at the packet. I did not open it.
"There is one additional directive," Gerald continued. His voice stayed even. "A private clause your father included separately but made legally binding through this office eight years ago."
Eight years ago.
I was fourteen years old eight years ago. My father had sat across from a lawyer and written something about me and locked it away and smiled at me every Thursday for eight years without saying a word.
"Miss Reyes." Gerald looked at me directly. "Your father's directive states that in the event of his death, you are to reside in the home of Caden Wolfe until such time as your safety can be confirmed and your circumstances are settled and understood. The directive is binding. It includes provisions your father put in place to ensure compliance from both parties."
The room was very quiet.
I heard every word.
I understood every word.
And then the embarrassment hit me like a wall.
Hot. Total. Immediate.
My father had written me into a legal document like a problem to be managed. Like a package to be stored somewhere safe. He had decided eight years ago that when he died, I would need to be handed to someone because I could not be trusted to handle myself. He had not asked me. Had not warned me. Had just written it down and signed it and tucked it away.
And the someone he had chosen was Caden Wolfe.
The man I had spent years trying to get over.
The man sitting ten feet away from me right now is looking at the table like it had personally wronged him.
I turned and looked at Caden directly for the first time since I walked in.
His jaw was tight. His coffee cup was still untouched. He looked up and met my eyes, and something moved across his face, not guilt exactly, but close. Something adjacent to guilt that had been sitting there a while.
"Did you put him up to this?" My voice came out quieter than I wanted. Quiet was worse than angry. Quiet meant I was using all my energy to hold something much bigger back.
Caden held my gaze. "No."
"Did you know?"
A beat. "I knew there was a directive. I did not know the specific terms until this week."
"But you knew something."
"Yes."
The honesty surprised me. I had expected careful deflection, the kind he was so good at. Instead he just sat there and gave me the truth plain and direct and it almost made it worse because I could not be angry at a lie.
"I will not do it," I said. I looked at Gerald. "I am twenty-two years old. I own my own apartment. I have a job. Whatever my father wrote eight years ago when I was a teenager."
"Miss Reyes." Gerald's voice was gentle but firm. "The clause carries financial implications. Your father tied the inheritance disbursement to compliance. If the directive is not honored, the estate of the house, the accounts, everything goes into a frozen trust for five years."
I stared at him.
"He did not." My voice came out very small.
"He was very thorough," Gerald said, with the tone of a man who respected the dead but also felt slightly bad about what he was being asked to deliver.
My father. My warm, funny, pancake-making father, who called every Thursday and drew wolves on birthday cards. He had reached forward from death and backed me into a corner with paperwork.
I laughed.
It came out slightly unhinged. Eli shifted in his seat. Gerald looked at the ceiling briefly.
Caden just watched me.
"Fine," I said, the word like I was setting something down very hard on a table. "Fine. How long?"
"Until your safety is confirmed," Gerald said. "Your father left that determination to Mr. Wolfe's discretion."
I turned and looked at Caden again.
His discretion. Caden decided when I was safe enough to leave. Caden decided when I was settled and understood, whatever that meant. I was being handed to him like a problem, and he was being given the key.
"I will honor it," Caden said. He said it low and direct, not to the room, to me. Like we were the only two people in it. "And I will not make it harder than it needs to be. You will have your own space. Your own life. I will not. " He stopped. Something moved through his eyes. "I will not make it uncomfortable."
The way he said it.
Uncomfortable.
Like he understood exactly why this arrangement was excruciating for me. Like he knew. And I could not tell if that made things better or worse.
I picked up my bag. "When?"
"This weekend would be."
"Tomorrow," I said. "I want it done. I want to move in, and I want to start counting down the days, and I want it over." I looked at Caden one last time. "And I am telling you right now. I will stay at your house. I will follow the directive. But I am not going to pretend this is normal."
Caden looked at me for a long moment.
"I would not ask you to," he said quietly.
Eli drove me back.
Caden had taken a separate car because, of course, he had; every moment near me was apparently something to be carefully managed, and Eli drove in comfortable silence for most of the trip, which I was grateful for.
I held the envelope from yesterday in my lap. Gerald had given it back to me after the meeting. The letter was folded inside it, and the photograph, and whatever other weight my father had decided I should carry.
I ran my thumb along the bottom edge of the envelope. Something shifted under my fingers.
I frowned.
I turned the envelope over. Along the inside bottom seam, almost invisible, something flat and folded was tucked against the paper. I had missed it the night before. I pulled it loose carefully.
A small square of paper. Folded twice.
My father's handwriting on the outside: For when you're angry. And you will be.
My hands were not steady when I opened it.
Four lines. That was all.
Baby girl.
I know you are furious with me. You have every right.
But he will keep you safe in ways I no longer can.
Trust him. And forgive me.
I read it three times.
Then I folded it back up, put it in my coat pocket against my chest, and looked out the window at the passing street.
My father had known he was going to die.
He had known well enough in advance to write a note about my anger. To prepare for it. To fold it into an envelope and leave it like a small, quiet apology.
Which meant he had also known why he was going to die.
Which meant he had known who was going to kill him.
Which meant there was a name, somewhere, in all of this.
And the man he had chosen to protect me, the man I was moving in with tomorrow, was either the safest person in my world right now.
Or the most dangerous.
I pressed my hand flat against my coat pocket where the note sat against my ribs.
Trust him.
My father's last words to me in his own handwriting.
I was going to try.
God help me, I was going to try.
Luna arrives at Caden's mansion the next morning with two suitcases and her chin up. A woman opens the door before she can knock, beautiful, polished, and looking at Luna like something small that has wandered onto expensive carpet. She looks Luna up and down once and says, "Oh. You're the one Marcus left him." Before Luna can answer, Caden appears in the hallway behind the woman, and something flashes across his face, sharp and quick, and he says the woman's name like a warning. The woman smiles and steps aside. And Luna realizes, with a drop in her stomach, that she has no idea who this woman is or what she means to Caden. But she already hates her.