Page 30 of Beautiful Savage
A pause that throbs with tension.
"She's not at this table, Isa," Marisol agrees, each word dripping acid, "because I don't trust her. And neither should any of you. Not until we know why her father was really in that garden. I've watched Gunner rebuild himself slowly after what happened to him, and I won't let some painter's daughter undo it all. She could be Hallstein's asset for all we know."
"I was an outsider once too," the quiet woman says carefully. "You all watched me the same way."
"You didn't arrive as someone's captive, Wren," Marisol shoots back. "You earned your place. She's just leverage that he's too compromised to use properly."
So that's her name. Wren. The woman beside the man with dark hair and broad shoulders.
"Look," Gabriel's voice enters carefully. The ex-priest. "We trust Gunner's judgment. Always have. But this situation…"
"Is exactly why he's not here," Marisol finishes. "He knows I'll ask the questions he won't face. Like why he's so sure she's connected to Hallstein when he won't interrogate her properly. Like why she's still here at all."
Another pause. No one contradicts her. The silence is agreement.
"He's falling for her," Adrian says quietly. "Or already has."
"Then he's a fool," Marisol's response is immediate and vicious. "And when this goes bad—when Hallstein makes a move, when she shows her true colors—we all go down with him. Everything our parents built, everything we bled for, gone, poof, because the most disciplined man any of us has ever met couldn't keep his dick in his pants for one fiscal quarter." A breath. Quieter, and somehow worse: "He's the careful one. He's never once been the careful one about her."
The crudeness of it makes me flinch.
"That's enough." Nico's voice carries an authority that ends discussion. "He's family. Until he proves otherwise, we back him."
I hear chairs shifting, the conversation trying to resettle.
"Dessert?" Sera asks, her voice deliberately light. "I made flan."
The conversation moves on, but I'm already backing away from the door. My chest feels hollowed out, scraped clean by Marisol's words. The family I've been listening to, the warmth I've been craving. They see me as a threat. An infection. Something that's destroying one of their own.
Just leverage.
My legs feel unsteady as I move down the hallway, but then something in me lurches sideways, decided before I can argue. The staff cubby is right there, those abandoned phones like a lifeline.
My hands barely shake as I pick up the first phone. Locked. The second, also locked. The third opens at my touch. Whoever owns it doesn't lock their phone with a password. Idiot.
My feet carry me further down the hall, past the garden door, to a quieter stretch where the family's voices fade to murmurs. My fingers dial from muscle memory. Ten digits that are written in my bones.
First ring. My pulse pounds so hard I feel it in my fingertips.
Second ring. What if he doesn't answer? What if three weeks of managed texts haven't been enough to keep him steady?
Third ring. He answers.
"Hello?" His voice is rough, tired, but not broken.
"Papa," I breathe, using the name only I call him.
"Daphne." The way he says my name, all that held-back relief letting go at once, nearly undoes me. "Mon Dieu, Daphne, is it really you?"
"I'm safe," I say quickly, keeping my voice steady though my free hand clenches into a fist. "I'm okay. I just… I needed to hear your voice."
"But the texts said, you said you needed space. Where are you? Your actual voice, I needed…" I hear something shift in the background. "Just tell me where you are."
"I can't." The words taste like betrayal. "Not yet. I need more time."
"Time for what? Daphne, please. I've been trying to give you space like you asked, but it's been three weeks. The roses are blooming and you're not here to see them."
My eyes stay dry but my chest cracks open. "Papa…"
