Isaiah glanced at one of the exhibits at Hamilton Grange, but he wasn’t really seeing anything. His mind was a million miles away, reliving the previous night. He had never experienced anything so intense or raw or beautiful.

Having joined the Trinity Masters later in life, Isaiah didn’t harbor any romantic notions about what his marriage would be like. He’d been old enough to understand the premise, the reasoning for why the Trinity Masters believed lives were better spent in threesomes.

Humans needed so many different things in order to be happy. Physical attraction, intellectual equals, emotional support. They needed someone to challenge them, coddle them, make them laugh, and give them unconditional love and acceptance. Finding one person to check off all those boxes was a difficult task, as proven by the high divorce rate in the country. Adding a third person to the mix improved the chances of making matches that worked, that went the distance.

All of those reasons made sense in Isaiah’s mind, helped him accept the uncertainty of his future marriage with logic and calmness. With some luck, one partner would offer sexual satisfaction, and the other might be someone he could talk to about academic pursuits and interests. Isaiah figured that was the best he could hope for and all he truly needed.

He’d been wrong. None of his logical, well-thought-out reasons for agreeing to an arranged ménage marriage explained last night to him. It had defied explanation.

He hadn’t expected to be so completely and utterly moved by two people. So drawn into their circle, so quickly enmeshed in the physical, emotional and intellectual with both of them.

Once Caden opened up to them, everything fell into place. And while Isaiah couldn’t shake the feeling there were still some secrets Caden was harboring, he wasn’t worried about them. The three of them were well suited and more than capable of weathering whatever storms they encountered. Isaiah had never felt more certain about anything in his life. And he didn’t care if it was the honeymoon phase or the amazing sex doing the thinking for him.

They found the display where the fan was supposed to be, but it was gone. Isaiah felt a moment of panic.

An older man approached them. “Ms. Hamilton?”

Tess nodded. “You must be Roger Coen.”

Roger shook her hand. “Your boss called this morning to tell me you would be here today to pick up the fan. I’ve prepared it for you.” He gestured toward a door Isaiah hadn’t noticed. “If you would follow me.”

The three of them traversed down a short hallway to a small room in the back that was clearly used exclusively by the staff. As they walked, Tess explained to Isaiah and Caden that Hamilton Grange had actually been moved twice in the past two hundred years, once in the late eighteen-hundreds and then again in 2006. Roger seemed impressed by her knowledge.

“Fortunately,” he added, “even with the moves, we’ve managed to keep the Grange within the boundary of the land Hamilton owned.”

“The restoration work is beautiful.”

“Here we go.” Roger handed Tess a box. “I’ve taken care with the packaging, backing board, rigid support, and the like.”

“Thank you very much, Roger. I know there was a quick turnaround on this, so I appreciate everything you’ve done.”

“Do you know how long the Smithsonian intends to study it?”

Isaiah wasn’t sure what excuse Tess’ boss had used to acquire the fan, but he was impressed by her connections. He could have used her knowledge and access to cool historical artifacts on the last few books he’d written. It had taken him months of requests and—in the end—downright begging before he was able to see a letter Thomas Jefferson had written that was in the Smithsonian Archives for a book he was researching.

“I’m afraid I can’t give you a specific time frame. I know that it’s important to your exhibit here. I promise that we will work expediently and with great care, of course.”

Roger nodded, appeased by her answer. Then he walked with them to the exit. “I’m interested in hearing what your research yields.”

Tess smiled and they said their goodbyes.

As they walked along a path through the park, Caden glanced at his phone. “Why don’t we catch a taxi and head back to the…”

His words faded away, capturing Isaiah’s attention. He looked over to see Caden had stopped walking.

“What is it?” Isaiah asked.

Caden didn’t answer right away, then shook his head. “Nothing.”

Isaiah looked toward the road where Caden had been looking. There were several parked cars and a handful of people, including a couple walking their dog. It did appear to be nothing, so he dismissed it.

Caden started walking toward the street, waving down a taxi when they reached it. He glanced over his shoulder as they pulled away, but Isaiah didn’t mention it. He was putting that same high-suspense fictional spin on Caden’s behavior again.

Rather than give the address to the hotel, Tess asked the driver to take them to the nearest craft store.

“What’s at the craft store?” Caden asked.

“You can usually grab soda ash with the tie-dye stuff. Soda ash is another name for sodium carbonate, which—when combined with heat—is what we’re going to use to see if there really is invisible ink on the fan.”

“Will that damage it?” Isaiah asked.

Tess shrugged. “It shouldn’t. But I’m going to be very careful just the same.”

An hour later—and after Caden’s first ever trip inside a craft store, a fact which seemed to upset Tess more than finding out about his sexual proclivities—they’d gathered all the supplies. Tess doubled-checked the bag. She had a thin artist’s paintbrush, cotton gloves, acid-free paper, and the soda ash. They returned to the hotel.

The hotel suite Caden had reserved was at the Mandarin Oriental in Hell’s Kitchen and had a beautiful view of Central Park.

Tess walked to the large windows, her eyes wide as she took in the expansive New York City skyline. Isaiah suspected the view would only get better as night fell and Manhattan lit up.

Caden cleared a spot on the dining table, unpacking their purchases. “I’ll let you open the box with the fan. I don’t want to hurt it.”

Tess turned away from the window, clearly reluctant. Isaiah was going to have to pull Caden aside at some point and try to encourage the man to stop and smell the roses occasionally.

Tess put a towel over the surface of the table, then laid out a layer of the acid-free paper. Then she put on gloves and worked slowly and methodically, extracting the fan from its packaging. “Roger knows his stuff,” she muttered, more to herself than to them. “Caden, get the hair dryer and plug it in, please.”

Gently, she placed the fan on the prepared surface. “Isaiah, can you dilute some of the soda ash according to the directions on the package?”

He moved to the bathroom, doing as she asked. When he returned, he found both Caden and Tess leaning over the fan, studying the tops of the pleats carefully.

“I’ll just apply the sodium carbonate to one spot to begin with.”

Isaiah placed the glass with the mixture next to her. “Just so you both know, whether this works or not, I’m putting invisible ink in my next book. This is cool stuff.”

Tess grinned while Caden simply rolled his eyes.

“Okay.” She dipped the paintbrush into the soda ash mixture. “Here goes nothing.”

She dabbed a tiny bit on the top of a pleat in the same spot Adams had put the letters in his drawing.

Once the small spot was covered, she turned on the hair dryer, holding it about two feet away and using the lower heat setting. Nothing appeared at first, so she moved the dryer the tiniest bit closer.

“This is taking too long,” Caden said. “I have a lighter.”

Tess stared at him. “I’m going to assume you’re joking.”

“You wouldn’t be happy if you knew that I let boxes of priceless art and artifacts rot in wet underground tunnels, would you?”

Isaiah thought for a moment he was going to have to protect Caden. Tess looked ready to do some serious damage.

Caden held up his hands. “Joke. Well, sort of. We moved most of it when I was in college. It all went to art storage and auction houses or into private collections. Except the papers. We left most of the papers.”

Tess turned wide, murder-filled eyes to Isaiah. “He’s joking, right?”

“Um.”

“Right?!”

“Yep, yep, he’s joking.” Isaiah made a face at Caden over Tess’ head.

Caden smiled. It was a slow grin that worked its way across his face. When Tess whipped her head around to glare at him, Caden’s expression changed to contrite.

Isaiah looked at the fan. Something started to appear. “It’s a number.”

“Holy shit,” Tess muttered. “It worked. I was right.”

Caden raced into the bedroom, returning with a notepad and pen. “Dab the soda ash on the rest of the pleats that are marked with letters in the journal, Tess. I’ll write down what you see.”

Despite her excitement, Tess didn’t seem to forget she was working with a valuable artifact. She kept her movements slow and deliberate, taking care not to use more of the sodium carbonate than necessary. Isaiah got handed the hair dryer, holding it exactly where she told him to. As they worked on each pleat, she or Isaiah read off the number to Caden, who wrote it down.

Once they were done, Tess carefully dabbed any excess moisture off the fan, applied a neutralizer, and then packed the fan away. By the time she was done, Caden was practically vibrating with impatience.

There were sixteen numbers and they were scrambled, some duplicated.

“Now what?” Isaiah asked. “We’ve got sixteen numbers. 3, 2, 1, 1, 3, 7, 4, 9, 5, 10, 1, 6, 5, 8, 2, 11. But there are only eleven letters on the fan drawing.” He read them out of the book as Caden recorded them. “TILMUCEPOND.”

Tess blew out the candle and carefully laid the fan down. “So let’s start unscrambling them. What’s the first number you wrote down, Caden?”

“Three,” he replied.

“And the third letter is L.”

Caden pulled a clean sheet of paper from the notepad, handing it and a second pen to Isaiah. They methodically worked their way through each number and letter combination, getting excited when the first six clearly formed the word “little”.

“Oh my God. I think it’s working,” Tess declared.

They matched up the last ten letters, forming the word “mountcupid.”

“Little Mount Cupid?” Caden shook his head. “That can’t be right. What the hell is Mount Cupid?”

“It can’t be,” Isaiah whispered when the words formed differently for him.

“What is it, Isaiah?” Tess asked excitedly.

“Little Mount. Cupid.”

Caden looked at him for more clarification, but Isaiah was already reaching for his laptop, logging onto the internet.

“That’s still clear as mud. Want to enlighten us?” Caden prodded.

Isaiah kept tapping at the keys as he explained. “Little Mountain in Italian is Monticello. Thomas Jefferson’s home. He’s the next founding father in the poem. That makes sense.”

“And Cupid?” Caden asked.

Isaiah found what he was looking for. He turned the laptop so Tess and Caden could see it. “There are quite a few statues at Monticello, including these two. ‘Hope with Cupid,’ and ‘Venus with Cupid.’”

“Is anyone else freaking out?” Tess asked, her eyes wide with amazement. “We did it.”

Caden laughed, shaking his head. “Nope. You did it, Tess. You were the one who knew about the fan and the Culper Ring and their love of invisible ink.”

Isaiah agreed. “Without you, Caden and I would still be in Boston spinning our wheels, trying to track down the history of that Rodney guy who signed the Declaration of Independence. Hamilton for the win.”

“And let me guess,” Tess said. “We’re going to Monticello.”

Caden hopped up as if ready to take off immediately.

“Steady, Cade. You’ve booked us a suite with one hell of a view. I intend to enjoy it for at least one night.” Isaiah was anxious to build on the previous night’s experience. If it were up to him, the three of them would spend the next month in bed, existing solely on room service and sex.

Caden frowned, but conceded. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll start checking into flights.”

Tess’ phone rang. She looked at the screen. “It’s my parents. I forgot to call them back yesterday.”

She clicked on the phone and started to walk into the bedroom, but stopped halfway across the room. “Hey, Dad. What’s—? What? When? Are you guys okay?”

Isaiah walked over to her, concerned. “Tess?” he whispered.

“House robbed,” she mouthed before speaking to her dad again. “Thank God you weren’t home. What did the police say?”

Caden moved quickly, capturing her attention. “Did they take the poem?”

Tess seemed surprised by his question, but asked her father anyway.

“Oh shit. Seriously?” Her response was all Isaiah had to hear. Caden cursed.

As Tess continued to speak to her dad, Isaiah walked to where Caden had dropped down to sit on the circular sectional.

“You think the break-in was connected to the poem.” Isaiah didn’t bother to pose his comment as a question. He thought the same thing.

“Somebody else is working on this mystery.”

“Yeah. It would appear that way. That day at headquarters, after we were assigned our task…” Isaiah had held off asking Caden why the Grand Master’s advisor had wanted to talk to him alone, but now it suddenly seemed pertinent. “Why did the advisor ask you to hang back?”

Caden blew out a long breath and for a moment, Isaiah thought he might refuse to answer, thought he’d misinterpreted the bond they had started to form last night.

Finally, Caden said, “Let’s wait until Tess gets off the phone. She should hear this too.”

Isaiah smiled, relieved. He reached over and placed a firm hand on Caden’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it all out, Cade. The mystery, the relationship, all of it.”

Caden nodded, but Isaiah noticed the other man’s eyes were clouded with doubt.

“Well,” Tess said, claiming her own spot on the couch between them. “That sounds like a mess. My parents went out to dinner last night to celebrate their anniversary. When they got home, the place was completely trashed. Someone had kicked in the back door and gone to town on it. Stole a bunch of electronics and jewelry, threw furniture over, broke picture frames. They wrecked the whole place.”

“And the poem?”

“Gone. Dad had brought it down from the attic right after I said I’d pick it up. He noticed it was missing just before he called me. I think he might suspect a connection between my questions and the break-in, but he didn’t ask me about it. Thank God. I hate lying to him. I keep wondering what would have happened if they’d come home early.”

Isaiah wrapped his arm around her shoulder, tugging her close. “Don’t think about it. They’re safe. That’s what matters.”

“Do you think I should warn them somehow? Tell them to go stay in a hotel or something?”

Caden shook his head. “No. Whoever broke in, they got what they wanted. There’s nothing to be served by going back.”

“Even so, do you guys mind if we drive to Virginia?” she asked. “I’d like to stop in and see my family on the way to Charlottesville, and I think we should get this fan to the Smithsonian. It’ll be safer there than with us.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Isaiah said before turning to Caden. “So…” he prompted as Tess looked at both of them curiously.

Caden cleared his throat, hesitating slightly before speaking. “It’s obvious someone else is trying to follow the path laid out by the poem. I didn’t want to say anything earlier because I wasn’t sure. But now…”

“What is it, Caden?” Tess asked.

“I saw a man today on the street who looked like Priscilla Hancock’s driver. I got a pretty good look at the guy outside the library the other day. He got into a black town car when we got in the taxi and I thought he was following us, but I decided I was just being paranoid when he took a left and disappeared.”

“Who is Priscilla Hancock to you?” Tess asked.

“I told you about my foster sister.” Caden swallowed heavily. “Rose.”

“The one your parents were training to be a submissive.” Even as he said it, Isaiah felt sick to his stomach. What they’d called “training” was rape, plain and simple. Giving it another word didn’t change the pure evil behind it.

“Yeah.” Caden leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his head bent. This conversation was hard for him.

“What about her?” Tess prodded as she placed a comforting hand on Caden’s forearm.

“The Hancocks are her parents. They didn’t want to publicly acknowledge Rose as their child, which is why she started living with us. That, and it’s pretty clear they gave Rose to my family so that my fathers could train her alongside me and my brother. The Grand Master believes—I believe—that the Hancocks are purists, that they’ve been benefiting financially from that stolen artwork and working overtime to keep the truth from coming out about their ancestors’ involvement. Mr. Hancock is Jayce Hancock.”

“The state senator from Massachusetts?” Isaiah asked, aghast.

“Yeah. He and his wife work very hard to maintain their lily-white reputations. It wouldn’t do his career any good for it to slip out that his ancestors were Nazi sympathizers who killed a boatful of children, and that he actively hid that fact while profiting from it.”

“Lots of people have skeletons in their closets,” Tess said.

“Yeah. But the Hancocks are all about image. They’re vain, selfish, egocentric assholes.”

“If they’re members of the Trinity Masters, who is their third?”

Every time Caden said Rose’s name, it took him back to a dark place he preferred to never see again. “Rose’s mother. Tallulah Grayson.”

Isaiah sighed. “You think they’re the ones following the trail. Trying to decipher the poem.”

“It’s going to suck if they are,” Tess said. “They’re in the poem. What if we find a clue that leads us to them? Or what if they have a clue we need?”

“If they are purists, they know about the role I played in helping my parents.” Caden threw his head back against the couch, closing his eyes, revealing his exhaustion. Isaiah couldn’t imagine what the past few years had done to Caden, but it was obvious they hadn’t been easy. “Actually, there’s no if. They are. And Priscilla knows exactly what I did for my parents.”

“The Grand Master’s advisor asked you to be a double agent?”

Caden opened his tired eyes and chuckled at Isaiah’s question. “Yeah. Sort of, but I’m not freaking James Bond. They let me know that the Hancocks may come knocking on my door. My decision about how to react to that visit was left up to me. The Grand Master doesn’t have enough evidence to accuse them outright, and like I said, the Trinity Masters need whatever this poem is hiding. If I was smart, I would have pretended I was going to take over from my parents.”

“I don’t want you to have anything to do with them.” Tess leaned toward Caden, wrapping her arms around his waist. He drew her closer and tightened the hold, looking at Isaiah as he did so.

“They know I’m not an ally. Not after my conversation with Mrs. Hancock outside the library. I should have played along, agreed with her. I was trying but…but I’m so damned tired of all the lies. I fucked it up.”

Isaiah laid his hand on Caden’s shoulder, offering him what little comfort he could.

“If they assume I’ve changed loyalties, and they know about this poem, the same way your family did, Tess, they’re probably trying to get whatever this is before we do. They’re not going to bother recruiting me back to their cause. They’re going to cover their asses.”

Isaiah agreed. If the Hancocks were responsible for the break-in at Tess’ family’s house, they weren’t looking to expand their numbers. They were entering the race.

Suddenly, Caden’s fast-forward attitude was starting to make sense. Time was no longer on their side.