Chapter 3: The Estate of Mirrors
The Vermont estate was a sprawling gothic fortress of timber and stone, buried deep in the snow-dusted pines. It was a place of ghosts. Everywhere we turned, there were portraits of a woman with the same dark, intelligent eyes as Ethan and Daniel.
For the first few days, I became the bridge between the brothers. Ethan began to talk. He talked about his mother’s laugh, her sharp wit, and the way the Brooks family had built an empire on blood and boardrooms.
I became the listener. And Daniel, who had never let anyone see his guard down, began to watch.
He watched me at dinner. He watched me walking the grounds. He watched me when I laughed at Ethan’s jokes. He was a man who analyzed human behavior for a living, and I was a mystery he couldn't solve.
"You don't want anything from us," he said one night as we stood on the balcony, watching the snowfall. "I’ve had my people run a complete background check. You were struggling to pay rent. You were drowning in debt. And yet, you’ve never asked for a dime."
"Is it so hard to believe that someone might just be decent?" I asked, looking up at him.
Daniel leaned against the stone railing, his silhouette sharp against the moonlight. "In my world, 'decent' is usually a mask for 'desperate.' But you... you’re different. You have a kind of fire I haven't seen in years."
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"Maybe you just need to look at things that aren't on a stock exchange," I whispered.
He turned, the distance between us suddenly closing. His hand brushed against my arm, a touch that felt like an electric current. "I’ve spent my life looking at the bottom line, Chloe. But since you arrived, the numbers don't seem to matter as much."
