Chapter 240: Chapter 240: Deceptively easy nature
Trevor left the archive room without a backward glance, moving with the unhurried composure of a man who had already decided exactly how this day was going to end, and for whom.
Every step toward his office was carefully planned, carrying the calm weight of someone whose patience had been tested one time too many. Vivienne’s persistence had been an irritation before, a nuisance he could swat away while still entertaining himself with her audacity. But now, now it joined the same category as Christian’s posturing and the clergy’s quiet, sanctimonious meddling. That category had a very short lifespan.
Patience? Nonexistent.
Mercy? Unlikely.
The west wing’s polished floors reflected the easy set of his shoulders, the kind of posture that would fool anyone into thinking he was in a good mood, unless they looked too closely at the eyes. Those, Windstone had once remarked, were where the temperature dropped.
He passed Lucas’s office on the way. The door stood open, a faint trace of familiar pheromones clinging stubbornly to the air despite the wide windows. Inside, Windstone was orchestrating the quiet chaos of a crime scene cleanup, his voice carrying instructions to two junior staff who were attempting to salvage what remained of the antique couch.
"Dispose of it," Windstone said finally, in the same tone one might use to issue a military order. "No amount of reupholstering will erase what was done to it."
One of the staff glanced at Trevor, froze for a heartbeat too long, and then busied themselves with hauling the ruined relic toward the service lift.
Windstone, catching the direction of Trevor’s gaze, merely inclined his head. "The Grand Duchess’s office will be serviceable again within the hour. The scent, however, may linger until next spring."
Trevor’s mouth curved faintly, though it didn’t reach his eyes. "Let it. Consider it a warning."
Trevor leaned against the doorframe with the kind of ease that made it impossible to tell whether he’d been there for three seconds or three hours. One shoulder caught the light from the hallway, the rest of him in shadow, a picture of casual elegance that would’ve fooled anyone who didn’t know him.
Windstone, unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, knew him far too well. He paused in directing the junior staff, one gloved hand still resting on the doomed couch’s carved arm, and met Trevor’s gaze for just long enough to confirm what he suspected.
"You’ve decided on something," Windstone said, tone mild, as though commenting on the weather.
Trevor’s mouth curved, slow and precise, like the draw of a blade from its sheath. "I might have."
Windstone took in the relaxed set of his stance, the way his fingers tapped once, only once, against the doorframe, and the faint gleam in his eyes that didn’t belong to a man simply returning from an afternoon stroll.
"And I assume," Windstone went on, voice dry, "that these plans do not involve a quiet evening and an early night."
Trevor didn’t bother to hide his amusement. "I’d say you assume correctly."
The butler exhaled through his nose, more acknowledgment than sigh, and glanced toward Lucas’s office, where the air was still faintly threaded with the lingering warmth of Trevor’s pheromones. "Shall I prepare the necessary... contingencies?"
Trevor’s smile didn’t change, but the temperature in the hallway seemed to drop a degree. "Yes. And make sure no one sees them coming."
Windstone inclined his head, stepping aside as if granting him passage, though Trevor didn’t move yet. He stayed there another moment, gaze sweeping over the wreckage of the couch, the faint scuff on the polished floor, the ghost of his husband’s scent clinging to the room.
When he finally pushed off the doorframe, it was with the same easy grace as before, but Windstone, ever the reader of the smallest tells, saw the truth in it. Trevor Fitzgeralt wasn’t just in motion.
He was already hunting.
—
Trevor’s office was quieter than Lucas’s by design, thick carpeting to swallow footsteps, heavy curtains to keep the light soft, and a desk large enough to serve as both a work surface and a battlefield. He sat behind it now, jacket off, cuffs rolled neatly to his forearms, the hum of the computer the only sound in the room.
The report glowed on his screen, stark in its language and damning in its detail.
Vivienne had been busy.
She wasn’t just sending letters and circling like a vulture; she was waist-deep in the kind of work that got people erased from professional registries and hauled in front of the Imperial Board for public dismantling. The logs were clinical, dates, lab access, subject transfers, but the content made his jaw tighten.
Recessives.
Betas.
The most common classifications in the population, yes, but their abundance didn’t make them expendable. It was still illegal, very illegal, to tamper with anyone’s secondary gender without the Empire’s direct authorization and oversight. The Imperial Board signed off on every sanctioned study, monitored every phase, and kept records that could survive a century in court.
Vivienne had bypassed all of it.
The methodology alone was enough to make his skin prickle: bond-pair simulations without consent, pheromone stress exposure, and unregulated drug trials to force or suppress secondary gender traits. She’d filed the experiments under benign agricultural research projects, counting on the fact that no one cross-checked those records unless they were already looking for her specifically.
Trevor leaned back in his chair slowly, the leather sighing under him. The glow of the monitor caught the edge of his reflection, composed, almost bored, the way he always looked when he was deciding how to ruin someone without leaving fingerprints.
Vivienne wasn’t just meddling in politics.
She was breaking the kind of laws that made enemies out of entire empires.
And now, she’d crossed the line from nuisance to liability, a liability Trevor had no patience for, no tolerance for, and no intention of allowing to survive past the week.
He closed the file, opened another, one that didn’t exist on any official system, and began typing with the steady precision of a man who dismantled lives the way others solved puzzles.