Page 36 of Inked Athena

Nova flinches and curls closer to the door. “I don’t mind the whistling, Myles. It’s better to hear something than nothing at all.”

The dig lands exactly where she intended. I flex my fingers against the leather seat between us, fighting the urge to drag her into my space. I wanted to see her fire return—just not while we’re trapped in a car with my head of security playing shepherd.

I grit my teeth. “Maybe you would’ve heard something if you hadn’t decided to pull that little stunt on the?—”

“Are we almost there?” She leans forward, making it clear she’s speaking to Myles and not to me.

I haven’t seen her this alive in days. It’s beautiful. It’s infuriating. It’s exactly what I need and exactly what I can’t handle right now.

“It’s just up ahead. The next right.” Myles shrugs at me in the rearview mirror, and it doesn’t matter, anyway. I kept her in the dark as long as possible. We’re one turn away from me explaining why we’re gonna have to spend the next God-only-knows-how-many months in a decrepit Scottish castle. In terms of being away from Chicago, this is about as far as we could ever get.

She thinks she’s mad now.

Wait ‘til she sees our destination.

The dense canopy of Scots pines breaks just as Myles takes the final turn, revealing Castle Moorbeath in all its imposing glory. Something flickers across Nova’s face—surprise, wonder, maybea hint of the same madness that possessed me to buy this monstrosity in the first place.

She gasps, and for the first time today, she forgets to pretend I don’t exist. “We’re staying in a castle? This isn’t ‘laying low.’ There are turrets!”

“The turrets were his favorite selling point,” Myles chimes in, clearly enjoying himself. “He was going to live up there and snipe anyone who came too close.”

“Shut up, Myles,” I grumble.

My best friend is getting too close to revealing exactly how bleak things were when I bought this place. And being here after years of letting it sit empty is a sign that things are beginning to take a bleak turn again. I’d rather Nova not know all the hairy details.

Luckily, she’s caught on to another detail.

“You own a castle? Like, the whole thing?”

“They don’t sell them in halves,” I mutter.

“That’s exactly why he bought it,” Myles says cheerfully. “Because he could have the whole thing to himself. He was tired of dealing in halves after settling with Katerina.”

I punch my fist into the back of Myles’s seat. “Watch the road. It’s narrowing up ahead.”

I turn back to Nova, ready to face whatever wrath is coming my way for bringing her to three hundred acres of wet, overcast solitude. But she’s gaping wide-eyed and slack-jawed through the window. She fumbles with the switch for a second before rolling her window down so she can take a deep breath.

As much as I want to believe my eyes are deceiving me, I think she actually might be smiling.

Myles pulls the car through an ancient stone gate crawling with moss and stops in front of the castle. No sooner than the engine is off, two fluffy shapes bound around the far side of the castle, bounding towards the car.

Nova squeals and flies out of the car to meet them.

I watch through the open door as she drops to her knees and greets two floppy-eared border collies. They look like they’re fresh from a dog food commercial.

“Look at the two of you!” she coos, accepting their face licks and cuddles with more excitement than she’s shown for anything in days.

Myles loops his arm over the passenger seat and turns to look back at me.

“Don’t fucking say a word,” I growl.

He snorts. “I wasn’t going to.”

He doesn’t need to. The truth is written all over Nova’s radiant face as she scratches behind the dogs’ ears and asks their names.

Nova loves it here.

Two weeks pass with relative ease. It’s a quiet existence. With Myles back in Chicago to shore up our operations there, I begin work before the sun is up and I don’t stop until long after it’s set beyond the pines.

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