Chapter 11

ISABELLA

As I stepped out through the glass doors, the morning air hit my face and I let it.

I was still steadying myself. Still pressing that fracture back into something manageable. The six words on my phone were still sitting behind my eyes like a light I could not turn off.

She called your name in her sleep.

I kept walking.

Then I heard her.

"Mrs Isabella."

I stopped.

I turned slowly.

Mara was crossing the wide entrance plaza with Lily at her side. Both of them moving toward the building. Mara had not seen me yet when she called my name. She had said it the way you say something you are not sure about, her voice adjusting itself mid-word, recalibrating.

"Oh no." A short pause. "Miss Isabella."

She stopped walking. Lily stopped with her.

I looked at Lily first. She was in a pale yellow dress. Her hair was pulled back. She was smaller than I had imagined, standing in real life in front of me, and her eyes were very careful in the way children's eyes get when they have learned to read a room before they enter it.

"Mrs Mara Blackwood," I said. My voice was even. My smile was wide. "My ex-husband's wife."

Mara's chin lifted slightly. She did not return the smile. Not properly.

Then Lily looked at me.

"Mrs Isabella," she said. Her voice was very soft. Almost careful.

Something moved through me that I had no name for.

"Oh, my Lily."

I took a step toward her. My hand was already reaching. I was not thinking about it. I just needed to be close to her, close enough to put a hand on her shoulder or tuck a piece of hair back, something small, something that cost nothing and meant everything.

"Lily." Mara's voice came down hard. "Step back."

Lily flinched. Small. Quick. The way a child flinches when they have been conditioned to expect sharpness.

I felt my blood go hot.

Mara exhaled. Long and deliberate, the breath of someone performing patience. She looked down at Lily and when she spoke again her voice had softened but the edge was still underneath it, only covered now.

"Baby. Go inside and find your father."

Lily did not look at me again. She walked past us both and into the building with her eyes down and her small shoulders held very still. I watched her go. I watched the doors close behind her.

Then I let the air around us settle.

One second.

Two.

I slapped Mara across the face.

The sound of it was sharp and clean.

She did not move for a moment. She stood there with her head turned from the impact and one hand coming up slowly to her cheek. When she looked back at me her expression had gone completely blank with shock.

"I am Lily's mother," I said. My voice did not rise. It did not need to. "You are her stepmother. Don't you ever yell at my daughter like that in front of me again." I looked at her steadily. "You have never given birth. You don't know what it costs. Stop forcing what doesn't fit."

Mara's hand was still pressed to her cheek. Her eyes sharpened.

"How dare you." Her voice came out thin and furious. "You know I can have you sued right now? You just assaulted me in front of witnesses."

I laughed.

Not a polite laugh. A real one. Full and unhurried.

"Have me sued?" I looked at her. "Girl. I have not even started with you and you are already pissing me off."

"Stop performing," she said, her voice climbing. "Stop standing here acting like a devoted mother. Like you are so deeply concerned about Lily. You have not been in her life for seven years."

"I gave birth to her."

"You signed her away."

The words were meant to land like a blade. I felt them. I had been feeling them for six years.

"You and Rane made me sign," I said. "While I was sedated. On a labour bed, hours after I gave birth to her, you put papers in front of me and you made me sign." My voice stayed level but every word had weight. "Don't talk to me about choice. You know what you did. Both of you know exactly what you did."

Mara said nothing for a moment.

Then she did something I had not expected. She moved. She began to walk a slow circle around me, measured and deliberate, the way you circle something you are sizing up.

"So," she said. Her tone shifted. Something almost like curiosity came into it. "You rebuilt yourself. You became this. Powerful. Known. Feared." She paused behind me. "How did you even do it?"

I turned with her so she was never at my back.

"You don't want to try me, Mara."

"Miss Isabella."

I turned at the voice. One of my guards had appeared at the edge of the plaza. Behind him, the convoy sat in a long quiet line at the entrance. Dark cars. Tinted glass. Engines running.

"I will be with you shortly," I said.

He nodded and stepped back.

I turned back to Mara.

"I am yet to begin with you," I said simply.

I started walking.

Then I stopped.

Halfway across the plaza, I stopped and looked back over my shoulder.

"Stop poisoning my daughter's mind," I said. "She will know the truth. Sooner than you think."

I walked to the car. The guard opened the door. I got in.

Through the window I could see Mara still standing in the plaza. Still watching. Her hand was no longer on her cheek. She had dropped it. She was standing very straight, watching the convoy the way someone watches something that frightens them while they are still deciding whether or not to show it.

I looked at her.

I smiled.

Not warmly.

The car pulled away.

*****

She slapped her.

She stood outside Blackwood Enterprises in broad daylight, surrounded by guards, a full convoy, and that same cold, unyielding gaze—and she struck Mara across the face as if she were nothing.

Mara kept her expression still until the cars were gone. She held it together through the lobby, through the elevator, down the long corridor. That was how it worked. You did not give security cameras anything to replay. You did not give the receptionist a story to tell later.

But by the time she reached Rane’s office, her hands were no longer steady.

She pushed the door open without knocking.

Rane sat behind his desk. He looked up.

“She slapped me,” Mara said. “She stood outside your building and put her hand across my face.”

He studied her for a moment. “Close the door, Mara.”

“How dare she,” Mara snapped. “How dare that woman come here and touch me. I want her charged. I want it filed today.” She stepped forward. “Are you hearing me?”

“Close the door.”

She did—harder than necessary.

“She was touching Lily,” Mara continued. “Reaching for her outside, uninvited, unannounced. I stepped in, and she slapped me for it.”

Rane didn’t move. He watched her with an expression she didn’t fully recognize—quiet, almost too quiet.

“Sit down,” he said.

“I don’t want to sit down. I want you to do something.”

“Sit down, Mara.”

Something in his tone made her obey.

Rane reached to the side of his desk and picked up a folder. He placed it carefully in front of her, opened it, and turned it so she could see.

Mara looked down.

Journal pages. Photographed. Dated entries in Agnes’s handwriting.

She recognized it immediately—the small, careful script, the dates always underlined.