Delilah was unravelling.

She had burst through the grand front doors like a woman possessed, heels clacking a frantic tattoo across the marble that echoed like gunfire in the cavernous foyer. She did not spare a glance for Sienna— or the new parlour maid who had frozen mid-polish, staring as though Delilah had sprouted horns and a tail—nor did she pause to kick off her shoes with her usual disdainful grace.

Nothing mattered except the single, incandescent fact burning in her brain.

Phei is here.

Phei is here.

She needed to find him.

Needed to drag him upstairs to her bedroom—her sanctum sanctorum, the one room she had guarded like a dragon's hoard for last two weeks—and finally, finally surrender everything she had been hoarding for him alone.

She bolted to his old room first.

Idiotic, she knew—even as her feet carried her there on muscle memory alone. Danton had long ago commandeered that pitiful cupboard of a space, turning it into his creepy little lair stuffed with paranoia and gods-only-knew-what-else.

Still, some treacherous part of her hoped to find Phei curled on that threadbare mattress as he once had been, pretending he wasn't crying so she wouldn't hear.

Empty.

Of course it was empty.

She whirled, pulse thundering in her ears like war drums, and nearly barrelled into one of the new housemaids—some dewy little thing hired last weeks to replace Phei's absence

"Have you seen Phei?"

The girl's cheeks blossomed a treacherous rose.

Actually blushed.

The sheer cheek of it.

"I—yes, Miss Maxton." The maid ducked her head, but Delilah caught the ghost of a smile tugging at her lips. "He… he went to the Master's study. With him."

Delilah's blood flash-froze in her veins.

Phei. And Harold. Alone.

Her mind catapulted straight to the darkest archives: the muffled thuds through the walls, the way Phei would flinch for weeks afterward, the grotesque kaleidoscope of bruises blooming across his skin like poisonous flowers.

She had never intervened—had pressed her pillow over her ears and pretended she heard nothing, because stepping in would have meant acknowledging it, and acknowledging it would have meant admitting how much she cared.

She braced for the screams.

Braced to finally—finally—do something. Burst in, claw her father's eyes out, throw herself between them like some tragic heroine. Anything.

But the mansion remained eerily silent.

No raised voices. No crashes. No cries.

And then the study door opened.

Phei emerged.

Unruffled. Immaculate. Not a single strand of hair displaced, not a mark on that unfairly beautiful face, nothing to suggest Harold had laid so much as a disapproving finger on him.

He was holding two letters—thick envelopes sealed with the ostentatious Maxton crest in blood-red wax, the one their father used for pronouncements he considered papal.

Delilah exhaled a breath she had not realised she was hoarding.

He was all right.

He was—

"Are you quite well?"

She startled.

Danton.

Her twin had materialized beside her like a particularly persistent wraith—too close, always too close—watching her with an expression that wore concern the way a wolf wears sheep's clothing.

"I'm perfectly fine," she snapped, too quickly.

But her gaze had already betrayed her, sliding past him to Phei.

He was walking away from the study, those letters tucked beneath one arm with casual proprietorship, and—as though he could feel the heat of her stare searing his skin—he turned.

Smiled.

That smile.

The one that turned her knees to water and her thoughts to static and her body into a live wire remembering exactly how it felt to straddle him, to rock against the hard, obscene ridge of him until she shattered like cheap crystal.

Her pulse stuttered.

Her mouth went dry.

And then he was gone.

Vanishing down the corridor toward the basement stairs with that effortless, predatory stride—toward the wine cellar.

Toward Melissa.

Of course.

Of bloody course.

Every time Phei deigned to grace the mansion with his presence—two, perhaps three visits in the past three weeks—he inevitably disappeared into that dimly lit vault with their mother.

"Carrying boxes," she claimed. "Helping catalogue the collection."

Performing whatever menial, invented labour Melissa conjured to keep him near, to keep those strong hands occupied.

Delilah had never spared it much thought before.

Now she thought of nothing else.

The images festered like an open wound: Phei alone with Melissa among the dusty racks of Château this and Dom Pérignon that, the air thick with the scent of cork and oak and something far more primal.

Melissa laughing at something he said—low, throaty laughter Delilah had never heard directed at their father.

Phei reaching past her for a high shelf, body brushing hers, the accidental-not-accidental contact lingering just a heartbeat too long.

"Delilah?"

Danton's voice slithered too close, laced with that cloying solicitude he wore like a second skin.

She flinched.

Her twin stood mere inches away, studying her with the intensity of a pathologist over a particularly fascinating cadaver. Concern etched his features—or something cleverly masquerading as concern.

"What?" she snapped, sharper than intended.

"You look… flushed." His gaze flicked over her face, lingering on her throat where her pulse hammered visibly. "Positively feverish."

"I ran up the stairs."

"Did you indeed?"

She offered no reply. Could offer none. Because Phei was descending into the cellar depths and she could not follow—could not explain the frantic compulsion to follow—could only stand frozen in the corridor while her brother's stare bored into her like a scalpel.

Thanks to Danton's suffocating proximity, Phei had not even greeted her.

Had not crossed the hall to brush his lips against her cheek, to murmur some wicked promise against her ear.

Had acknowledged her only with that single, devastating smile before disappearing below with their mother.

"I'm going to my room," Delilah declared, voice flat as pressed steel.

She turned on her heel and fled before Danton could respond.

Did not witness the slow exhale of relief that escaped him.

Did not see the glacial resolve that settled over his aristocratic features like frost on cathedral glass.

Did not see him slide his phone from his pocket and begin typing with manic precision, jaw clenched, eyes tracking her retreating form until she vanished up the grand staircase.

Dinner was at seven.

Delilah had changed three times—each outfit discarded with mounting frustration until she settled on something deceptively simple: a silk slip dress the colour of fresh blood, cut dangerously low at the back.

She had reapplied her makeup twice, smoked her eyes until they looked like sin incarnate. She had stared at the innocuous cotton bag in her purse for ten full minutes—fingers trembling with the urge to tear it open, to discover what delicious depravity he had chosen for her—before forcing herself to wait, to savour the anticipation until she could properly worship whatever lay inside.

She descended to find the dining room already half-occupied.

Sienna lounged at her usual place, phone in hand, scrolling with indifference of someone who had long ago decided the real world was beneath her notice.

Their father's seat stood empty—he always arrived late, always orchestrated an entrance worthy of a minor despot.

And then—

Phei emerged from the kitchen corridor.

Delilah's breath snagged in her throat.

He looked criminal.

Unfairly, infuriatingly criminal. He had changed—new shirt, charcoal, sleeves rolled to expose corded forearms still faintly flushed from whatever exertion the cellar had demanded.

And behind him—

Melissa.

Their mother.

Trailing him with an expression that punched the air from Delilah's lungs.

She knew that look.

Knew it with the intimacy of a mirror, because she had worn its twin mere hours ago in the fire-pit lounge: eyes softly unfocused, lips swollen and parted as if still tasting something forbidden, gait a fraction too careful—like a woman balancing on the delicious edge of ruin, terrified someone might notice the aftershocks still rippling through her thighs.

Melissa's hand drifted unconsciously to her throat, fingers brushing the high collar of her blouse as though checking that no evidence remained.

The look of a woman who had just been thoroughly, masterfully satisfied and was now forced to pretend civility over soup.

No.

Delilah's mind recoiled.

Impossible.

Melissa is our mother. Phei's aunt, for all intents and purposes. There was no reality—no conceivable universe—in which she would allow—

Phei caught her stare across the room.

Smiled.

Then—so swift she nearly convinced herself she had imagined it—he winked.

A private, wicked flick of one eye meant solely for her. A promise and a taunt wrapped in one, shared across the polished mahogany while their mother smoothed an invisible wrinkle from her skirt and Sienna remained oblivious in her digital cocoon.

Delilah's fingers found the carved arm of her chair and clenched.

Her breath fractured.

Her thoughts scattered like startled birds.

She could only watch as he moved to the table with that quiet proprietary grace, pulled out a chair—not beside her, curse him, but opposite, where she would have an unobstructed view of every lethal line of him—

As though this house, this family women were already his to inherit.

The doubt flickered—poisonous, insidious.

That expression on Melissa's face. The prolonged absence in the cellar. The way Phei now navigated the mansion like a conqueror surveying newly claimed territory.

But then he smiled at her again—slow, warm, devastating—and the doubt dissolved like mist.

None of it matters.

He was here. He had winked at her. The cotton bag waited upstairs like a promise of ruin. And tonight—whatever depraved delights the evening held—she would finally be his in every way that counted.

"Good evening, everyone."

Harold's voice sliced through the room like a guillotine blade.

Delilah's gaze snapped to the doorway.

Her father walked, still in his bespoke suit, expression carved from granite.

In his hands he held something that turned her blood to ice.

Something that made even Sienna lower her phone.

Harold stepped forward.

And Delilah shivered.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.