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I shake my head. “Samson is capable of obsession. Possession. Rage. Violence. But love? No.”

Cain leans back in the chair. “That’s what Father thought too.”

I close my eyes. I think of Samson as a boy with blood on his knuckles and no fear in his eyes. Samson taking beatings without sound. Samson at that castle, isolating himself from the rest of us because the world asks less of beasts when they stay in their towers.

My skin prickles.

“Who?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

“You know who.”

“No.”

Cain chuckles. “Delaney Cross. Don’t play dumb with me, Nate. It’s beneath you.”

Delaney Cross. The woman I warned Sam about. The woman who, according to messages and whispers and half-finished orders, has not backed down.

And Ella⁠—

No.

Do not think of Ella.

I grip the edge of the desk. “Where is she?”

“With Samson.”

“Where?”

“In that old dining club he likes to call a castle.”

Right. His castle. I’m not sure Sam himself knows all the skeletons that place hides.

“Voluntarily?” I ask.

Cain tilts his head. “That depends on whom you ask.”

“Cain.”

“She opened the door.”

I stare at him. “What?”

“Delaney opened the door.”

I swallow down a gulp. “She did?”

Cain nods once.

The room goes very cold. I rub my hands over my arms to ease the chill.

Delaney opened the door.

And now Father will view her as a threat.

She may as well be dead.

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