Chapter 1
“Who told you to make her blame me?”
Celeste looked toward the half-open council-room door.
That glance lasted less than a second.
It was enough.
I picked up June’s phone from the table and handed it to one of my guards.
“Keep the recording.”
Then I looked toward the doorway.
“Come out.”
Nobody moved.
Maisie was behind me with June, her small reddened fingers pressed against her cardigan. I could hear her crying quietly enough that she was trying not to be heard.
That nearly broke whatever restraint I had left.
“Now.”
A chair scraped inside the council room.
Silas Marlowe stepped through the door.
My father’s older brother.
Sixty-eight.
Former consigliere.
The man who taught me how to read an ambush before I was old enough to shave.
He looked at Celeste first.
Not me.
There.
Confirmation.
Gavin pushed himself upright among the fallen blankets and logs.
“Uncle Silas—”
“Quiet.”
Silas did not raise his voice.
Neither did I.
He looked toward Maisie.
“She was never supposed to be hurt.”
I stared.
Not denial.
A distinction.
“What was supposed to happen?”
Silence.
June suddenly spoke.
“I heard them yesterday.”
Every head turned toward her.
She tightened her grip around Maisie’s shoulders.
“Mr. Gavin told Miss Celeste that once Maisie said Boss burned her, the council would ‘have what it needed.’”
Silas closed his eyes.
I looked at him.
“What did the council need?”
He answered reluctantly.
“Proof.”
“Of what?”
“That grief has made you dangerous inside your own home.”
My wife Amelia had been dead for two years.
There it was.
May you like
They had taken my grief, my daughter, my fiancée, and an old fireplace—
and tried to build a reason to remove me from my own chair.
