Chapter 2 2

The rain came down in sheets, turning the world into a gray blur. The private road leading to the Hamptons estate was a river of sludge.

The Rolls-Royce slowed, then stopped. A massive oak tree, a casualty of the storm, blocked the paved path.

"Detour," the driver muttered, sweat beading on his neck. He turned the wheel, guiding the heavy vehicle onto the grass verge.

It was a mistake.

The ground was soft, saturated. The heavy car sank. The driver hit the gas. The wheels spun, whining high and shrill, flinging mud against the wheel wells. The car didn't move forward; it slid sideways, tilting dangerously.

Chambers checked his watch. He tapped the face of it, his brow furrowing. "We are on a schedule. Mr. Vance is pacing."

The driver was frantic now, punching numbers into his phone. "No signal. The storm must have knocked out the tower."

Serena looked out the window. She saw the angle of the slope, the depth of the mud, the texture of the grass. Physics. It was just physics.

"Let me try," she said softly.

Chambers turned, blinking. "Miss Vance, I hardly think-"

Serena was already opening the door. The rain hit her instantly, soaking her cheap gray hoodie, plastering her hair to her cheeks. She walked to the driver's side.

She didn't shout. She just looked at the driver. It was a specific look, one she usually saved for interrogations.

The driver scrambled out of the seat.

Serena slid in. The seat was too far back. She adjusted it. Her hands gripped the leather wheel. It felt good. Solid.

She reached for the dashboard console. Her finger hovered over the traction control button. Click. Off.

Chambers, in the back, gripped the handle above the door. "Miss Vance?"

Serena shifted the transmission to manual. She tapped the gas pedal, feathering it, feeling the exact moment the tires lost friction.

She didn't fight the slide. She turned the wheel hard to the left, against logic. The car's rear end swung out, a pendulum of two and a half tons.

Chambers gasped.

Just as the car reached the apex of the swing, Serena slammed the wheel to the right and floored the accelerator. She popped the handbrake for a fraction of a second.

The engine roared. The car didn't spin. It bit. The tires found the one patch of solid earth beneath the mud and launched the vehicle forward.

They shot out of the ditch, drifting sideways onto the pavement. Serena corrected the steering with a minute flick of her wrists. The car straightened out, humming as if nothing had happened.

Thirty seconds.

She put the car in park and turned around. She offered Chambers a shy, wobbly smile.

"Lucky," she said.

Chambers stared at her. His chest was heaving slightly. He knew cars. He knew physics. That wasn't luck. That was precision. The kind of precision he'd only seen once before, from a former Special Forces driver he'd once employed.

"Indeed," Chambers said, his voice tight. "Very... lucky."

The driver, standing in the rain, looked like he'd seen a ghost. Serena climbed back into the rear seat, shivering theatrically.

As they drove through the iron gates of the Vance estate, the main house loomed out of the mist. It was a palace. Stone, glass, light.

Serena watched the fountain, the manicured hedges, the line of staff waiting under umbrellas. She felt nothing. She had slept in palaces in Riyadh and bunkers in Berlin. This was just another location.

But she widened her eyes. She let her jaw drop slightly. She pressed her hand to the glass.

"It's... big," she whispered.

The car stopped under the portico. The heavy double doors of the house began to open, spilling golden light onto the wet stones.