Chapter 15

ISABELLA

I heard she called three times.

Chloe told me when she knocked on my office door that afternoon, her voice carrying exactly the kind of calm that meant she was filtering something larger down to its useful parts. Three calls. The first two, she said, Mara had hung up the moment she realised who she was speaking to. The third time she had stayed on the line long enough to say what she wanted.

To speak to me directly.

I set down my pen. I looked at Chloe.

"And?" I said.

"I told her you were unavailable." Chloe moved to the chair across from my desk and sat without being invited. She had earned that a long time ago. "She wants a meeting. In person. As soon as possible." A pause. "She said it was personal and legal."

"It's neither," I said. "It's panic."

Chloe said nothing. She already knew.

What Mara wanted was to look at my face. That was the whole of it. She wanted to sit across from me in a room and read whatever she found there and use it to decide how much she still had to worry about. She had been doing that to people for years. Reading rooms. Reading faces. Filing what she found into the part of herself that calculated leverage.

I knew because I had watched her do it, once, a long time ago, in a different life. I had been on the other side of a room then. Smaller. Younger. Not yet understanding what kind of woman was watching me.

I understood now.

"Book Thursday at two," I said. "Here. This building. This office."

Chloe looked at me for just a moment. She understood what I meant by this office. She had been with me when I walked in on my first morning, set my bag on the desk that used to be someone else's, and did not explain myself to anyone. She had watched the nameplate get changed that same afternoon.

"Don't tell her which office until she arrives," I added.

The corner of Chloe's mouth moved. It was small. She stood.

"Anything else?" she asked.

"Make sure she has enough time to see the nameplate before I open the door," I said. "Not long. Just enough."

Chloe nodded once and left.

I looked back at the files on my desk.

Thursday. Four days.

The same four days I had before the first official visit with Lily.

I picked up my pen.

I had things to do.

* * *

She arrived nine minutes early.

I knew because Chloe sent me a single message: She's here.

I stayed at my desk. I did not go to the window. I did not adjust anything in the room. I had arranged it already, two days before, and I had not touched it since. Some preparations only work if you leave them alone afterward.

I heard the lift. I heard the corridor. I heard the specific quality of silence that happens when someone stops walking.

She had seen the nameplate.

I gave her three seconds. I counted them. Then I opened the door.

Mara looked exactly as she always had. Good coat. Closed bag. The kind of posture that has been maintained so long it no longer requires effort. She was watching my face before the door was fully open, already running the calculation, already taking inventory of what she found.

I stepped back and let her in.

I did not stand when she entered. I went back to my desk and sat, and I gestured to the chair across from me the way you gesture to someone who has come to deliver a package. Useful. Expected. Not particularly remarkable.

She sat.

Neither of us spoke for a moment. We looked at each other across the desk. I let the silence exist. I had learned a long time ago that the person who fills silence first is usually the one who needs the room more.

Mara smiled.

It was the smile she used when she wanted you to feel she already knew the ending. Slow. Wide enough. Designed to land somewhere between confidence and threat.

"Seems you are very certain of getting your revenge," she said. "I want you to know that this won't last."

I looked at her.

"Won't last," I said.

I didn't make it a question. I just let her hear it back.

She kept the smile. She was good. I gave her that.

"I own a significant part of this company," she said. "Do you think a nameplate changes that? A desk?" She tilted her head slightly, the way she did when she was performing a kind of patience she did not actually feel. "I am thinking, actually, of having the whole company to myself. So you and Rane will have nothing left between you." She laughed. It came out loud and a little too sharp. It filled the room the way things do when they are trying to fill something that they are not quite big enough for.

I let her finish.

I let the laugh land and settle and go quiet.

Then I said: "Is that why you called? To tell me your plans?"

Something moved behind her eyes. Not much. But I saw it.

"I called," Mara said, "because you filed a complaint against me. For what?" Her voice sharpened. Not loud. Controlled sharp, which is the kind that cuts. "For raising a child that her own mother signed away. For giving six years of my life to a little girl that her mother walked out on. Are you really that ungrateful? That a woman who—"

Two knocks at the door.

Even. Unhurried. Half a second between them.

I looked toward the door.

"Chloe?" I said.

The door opened just enough. Chloe stood in the gap with her usual composure, and I could see in the set of her face that she had chosen her moment carefully.

"It's time for the board meeting," she said.

Mara turned in her chair. "I wasn't informed of any board meeting."