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Chapter 2

“Say your name.” As the stranger issues the command, he lowers his eyes to fully take me in, and the coldness in them unsettles my every nerve. “Your name.”

It should be a simple question with an even simpler answer. I’m Ellen. Just Ellen. I work as a maid in the Winthorp household—on paper. But papers can be forged, identities erased. Or mistaken.

I can’t get Briar’s last words to me out of my head:We look alike.

Wherever I am, I don’t think she’s here with me. This room must have been a bedroom once. Behind the man stands a rickety dresser, lopsided with age and disuse. Hanging on the wall above it is a mirror caked with dust. Only the hint of my reflection is visible, but the woman staring back at me is a stranger. Her brown hair is neatly coifed, half coiled into a braid and the rest cascading down her shoulders. Her blouse is silk, and—though it isn’t visible from this angle—her burgundy skirt is satin. Her shoes are worth more than a Winthorp servant earns in a year. Her lips are a soft shade of pink.

“We look alike,” Briar told me shortly before leaving the limo and taking another car to the airport. “I need to make a detour,” she said. “We’ll meet up later. I’m going to make sure you have the best time in London! You’ll see.”

Only London has never felt farther away. My chest has never felt so tight. This room is airless—I’m suffocating. For all her indifference to me, Briar has never played along in one of Robert’s games before.

“I won’t ask you again, Little One.” The man strokes fingers caked with mud across my cheek, and I flinch. There’s no gentleness in his touch. No malice, either. “Say your name.”

“My name is…” My voice fails me as my gaze returns to the mirror and I finally identify the woman staring back at me. “My name is Briar Winthorp.”

The man doesn’t laugh at the admission. He doesn’t squint as if to make out the pauper hiding behind these fancy clothes. He nods once, his eyes narrowing. “Your father has enemies, Little One.”

I inhale sharply as more memories trickle back.

I was in the motorcade…

“I have to run an errand,” Briar said. She left, only the procession continued as if she were still there beside me. The security remained, as did the four-man bodyguard detail lurking on either side of the main procession.

We look alike.

“Look at me,” the stranger snaps, demanding my attention once more. He’s closer now, but I still have to strain to take him in fully. He’s tall, taller than Robert. Gray fatigues and a dark jacket shroud most of his frame. Muscle shapes him down to his massive hands. He cracks the knuckles on each finger one by one, aware of me watching. He’s no businessman from the Winthorp industries. No, he’s something else, a title that takes my brain nearly a minute to define.Soldier. Mercenary. Murderer.

“Your fiancé as well,” he continues. “He has enemies. Can you tell me why that may be?”

Fiancé? He must mean Daniel.Briar’sfiancé, a man who, to his own merit, has amassed a power almost comparable to Robert Winthorp Sr.’s.

“Answer me, Little One.” The stranger strokes my hair this time, snagging loose strands as he does.

Robert used to touch me the same way—back when he still relished the thrill of hunting me down like cattle. Lately, he’s been lazier in his endeavors, cornering me without even half the cunning he once employed. But that brief respite has made me weak against this method.

It’s remarkable how much can be conveyed through someone’s fingertips. Robert’s are soft and maliciously manicured, and they bruised when he struck me too hard.Thisman’s skin is callused and rough. From work. From brutality. From abuse. Scars mark him down to the base of his wrists, like the kind Briar disguises with long sleeves and silk blouses.

“I will warn you now.” The stroking touch becomes a manacle of fingers latching onto my skull and forcing my chin upright. “Speak. Obey.”

“He…he’s a businessman, Daniel is,” I stammer as his thumb grazes my lower lip, capturing each word.

“A businessman?” The stranger laughs. “That is one way to put it, Little One.”

One way to put it. Criminal is another—a word only the most brazen of journalists dare to use in their headlines.

“What…what are you going to do to me?” I croak.

“Do to you?” His gaze roves downward, settling over the high neckline of Briar’s blouse. Once again, he resembles Robert.

I know that look.You can survive ten hours,a part of me whispers. But it’s cold comfort—this time, I’m lying.

“I am going to punish you, Little One,” the man tells me, his tone a grating hiss. “Your father. Your lover. They took something from me.”

Without warning, I’m shoved backward, my fall broken by the rickety mattress.

“I will take something from them.”


Tags: Lana Sky War of Roses Dark