Chapter 4 - THE SLIPS OF THE TONGUE
The silence in the kitchen felt pressurized, vibrating with an electric, dangerous tension that made the hairs on the back of Saraphina’s neck stand up.
Kieran recovered his composure with the terrifying speed of an apex predator. The flicker of vulnerability vanished, his jaw locking back into an unyielding block of granite. His dark eyes darkened into bottomless pools of obsidian, fixed on her with an intensity that made the cold floor beneath her shoes feel like thin ice over deep water.
“You forget your place, Saraphina,” Kieran said, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly register that was entirely devoid of warmth, though the slight rasp in his throat betrayed the rapid thud of his pulse.
“I don't forget anything, Mr. Blackwood,” Saraphina replied quietly, her voice trembling but steadying under the weight of her own exhaustion. She was too tired to play the submissive servant tonight; she was too close to the edge of an abyss to care about his pride.
She stepped back from the island, her hands sliding from her apron to her sides, intending to put distance between herself and the intoxicating, suffocating heat radiating from his broad chest.
She turned toward the arched entrance of the shadowed service hallway that led back to her modest quarters behind the laundry suites.
“I work twelve-hour shifts in this house,” Saraphina said, her words coming faster now, propelled by the raw friction of her frayed nerves. “I wake up at five to prep the breakfast service, I polish silver until my knuckles bleed, and I spend every single Sunday in Manhattan. Who exactly would I be dating, Mr. Blackwood? When would I even have the time to meet a man?”
She took two brisk strides toward the corridor, her rubber soles padding against the limestone.
Behind her, Kieran did not move, but his voice struck the air like a steel cable snapping taut:
“Manhattan?”
Saraphina froze mid-step, her left foot hovering an inch above the floor tiles.
A cold, sickening dread poured into her stomach, instantly extinguishing the fire of her defiance.
Manhattan.
The single word echoed off the dark cabinetry, sounding like an alarm bell in the quiet kitchen.
Saraphina squeezed her eyes shut, her teeth sinking hard into her lower lip until she tasted the faint, metallic tang of copper.
Why did I say that?
In eight months of employment, her Sunday leaves had been cataloged on the estate’s security log as personal personal-care days to visit an elderly aunt in New Jersey. Kieran Blackwood ran his estate with the paranoid, microscopic oversight of a man who assumed everyone was an informant or an operative sent by the Moretti family in Queens. Every staff member’s travel was monitored, every vehicle logged at the front security gates. Saraphina had spent months taking three different commuter trains, paying for subway fares in cash, and walking eight blocks in the rain to avoid leaving a digital trail between the Blackwood estate and the pediatric pulmonary clinic on East 77th Street.
Now, with one exhausted, careless sentence, she had shattered her own cover story.
She turned her head slowly, looking back over her shoulder toward the island.
May you like
Kieran was no longer leaning. He had straightened to his full, imposing height, his broad shoulders squared, his black silk robe hanging straight down his muscular frame. His head was tilted, his dark wavy hair catching the amber light, his eyes narrowed into sharp, lethal slits that dissected her posture with forensic clarity.
“You told the gatehouse you visit your aunt in Newark,” Kieran murmured, his voice conversational, quiet, and absolutely terrifying. He took a single, slow step toward her, his bare feet moving across the limestone with predatory grace. “Newark isn't Manhattan, Saraphina. What are you doing in the city every Sunday?”
