After Rebirth, I Became My Ex's Aunt-in-Law

The attic was a long, low tunnel of beams and dust sheets, and it was freezing.

Aria ducked under one rafter, nearly brained herself on the next, and followed the draft to the far end. A dormer window stood propped open with a broken chair leg. Rain blew in across the floorboards.

She leaned out.

Damien was on the roof.

He knelt on the slate beside the chimney stack, one knee braced in the gutter, twenty feet from the window. His t-shirt was soaked through and stuck to his back. Beside him sat a hammer, a coil of wire, and a neat stack of grey slates.

Past the gutter there was nothing. Just air, and the gravel drive a long way down.

”Damien.”

He didn’t look up. He fitted a slate into a gap, tapped it twice, and reached for the next one. ”Go back inside. It’s cold.”

”I’m cold? You’re on a roof!”

”I noticed.”

”In the rain!”

”It’s mostly stopped.”

It had not mostly stopped. A gust threw water across Aria’s face. She wiped it off with her sleeve and gripped the window frame.

”Where did you even get those?”

”There’s a barn behind the kitchen garden. Somebody bought a pallet of slate years ago and never used it.” He set another one. ”The wire’s from a fence.”

”So you stole a fence.”

”I borrowed part of a fence.”

’He’s doing roof repairs,’ Aria thought. ’The CEO of Sinclair Corp is doing unpaid roof repairs in the rain. Which timeline is this?’

His heel shifted. A clump of moss broke loose under it, slid down the slope, and dropped over the edge.

Aria’s stomach went with it.

”Damien,” she said, and her voice came out worried. ”Please come in.”

The hammer stopped.

He looked up at her then. Whatever he saw on her face made him set the hammer down on the slate.

”Two more,” he said quietly. ”Then I’m coming in. I won’t fall.”

”You don’t know that.”

”I do.” He held her gaze. ”Count them with me.”

So she counted. One slate, wired and tapped into place. Then the second. Then he edged back along the gutter, palms flat on the wet stone, and swung his legs through the window. She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and hauled him the rest of the way in.

He stood dripping on the floorboards. She punched him in the chest.

”Ow,” Damien said.

”You don’t get to do that.” She hit him again, weaker. ”You don’t go somewhere high, risking your life without telling me.”

He caught her wrist and pulled her against him, wet shirt and all. He was freezing.

”I’m sorry,” he said into her hair.

She stayed there until her heart stopped trying to climb out of her throat.

Then she stepped back and looked at him properly. His lips had gone pale. There was a faint crease between his brows that she knew too well, and when she laid two fingers on the inside of his wrist, his pulse was skittering.

”How bad?” she asked.

”It’s nothing.”

”Damien.”

”Behind the left eye,” he admitted. ”Since the coffee.”

Two hours of sleep. Four sips of brine. An hour on a freezing roof. His nervous system was a dry forest waiting for a match.

Aria pressed her thumbs to his temples, then slid her fingers back into his wet hair to find the points at the base of his skull. She pressed and held, breathing slowly until he breathed with her.

Under her hands, his shoulders came down one notch at a time. The crease between his brows smoothed out.

He closed his eyes and leaned into her palms like a large, damp cat.

”Better?”

”Yes.”

”Good. Now tell me why.”

He opened his eyes. ”The water comes in at the chimney and runs down inside the wall to the beam over the foyer. One side of it is already soft. Another winter and the ceiling comes down.”

”You could have sent one of your men,” she said.

”I wanted to do it.”

She took his cold hand in hers. ”Come on. You need a hot shower.”

”The water heater is broken too.”

”Of course it is.”

They came down the main staircase and found Théo standing alone in the middle of the foyer. He wore pajama bottoms and a sweater three sizes too big, and he was staring at the bucket.

The water in it was perfectly still.

Théo looked up at the ceiling. Down at the bucket. Up at the ceiling again. Then he turned and looked at Damien, who was still soaked, the hammer in one hand.

Damien looked back.

Théo marched to the bucket, hoisted it in both arms, and carried it toward the kitchen, sloshing water over his bare feet. At the doorway he stopped and glared over his shoulder.

”Ça change rien.”

Then he was gone.

Aria looked at Damien. ”What did he say?”

”That it doesn’t change anything.” The corner of his mouth moved. Aria would have called it a smile.

By eleven, Damien was dry, dressed in clothes one of his contractors had produced from the back of a G-Wagon, and on his third phone call.

Aria sat cross-legged on the short iron bed and listened.

”Get the cars off her drive,” he was saying. ”All of them.” A pause. ”I don’t care. The inn in the village. Book every room. Two men at the crossroads, one at the church, one at the bakery. Anyone who wasn’t living there yesterday, I want a photograph.”

He hung up and dialed again.

”Who now?”

”Kai.”

”It’s five in the morning in New York.”

”Yes,” Damien said, and put it on speaker.

It rang four times.

”I want it on the record,” Kai said thickly, ”that you two only have emergencies before sunrise. Do you know what sunrise is, Damien? It’s when normal people are asleep.”

”Hi, Kai,” Aria said.

”Sister-in-law. Thank God, a reasonable person.”

”I need a name run,” Damien said. ”Valérie. Marseille. She runs the Vipers. Her son is the man in my basement.”

The whining stopped. On the other end of the line, keys began to click.

”Give me twenty minutes.”

He called back in twelve.

”The son was easy,” Kai said. ”Rémy. Born in Marseille. Two assault arrests, both dropped. An Instagram full of boats and terrible sunglasses. Mother on the birth certificate is Valérie. No surname.”

”And Valérie?”

”Nothing.”

Damien’s eyes narrowed. ”Nothing.”

”I mean nothing, Damien. No passport I can find. No property, no bank account, no phone in her name. Not a single photograph. I found a guy in a bar on the Vieux-Port who says he worked for her for six years, and he couldn’t tell me what color her hair is.” Kai paused. ”He described her hands.”

Aria’s skin prickled. A slender hand drifting into the frame. A silver snake swinging from its fingers.

”Keep digging,” Damien said.

”I am. I’m telling you something else.” Kai’s voice had gone flat. ”I find everybody. Senators’ mistresses. Dead men who aren’t dead. I have never once come up empty. This woman has spent years making sure she doesn’t exist.”

Nobody said anything.

Aria looked down at her phone. 11:04 a.m.

Fifty-six hours to make a deal with a woman nobody had ever seen.