Chapter 3

ISABELLA

Chloe knocked twice before she opened the door.

"Madam, it's time. We don’t have to be late"

I was already at the mirror, clutch in hand. “I need to dress the best tonight.”

"You look like you own the place, more like a queen that you are" she said, stepping behind me to fix the clasp. "Which, to be fair, you actually do."

"Sixty percent of it."

"Close enough." She met my eyes in the mirror. "You good?"

"I'm great."

She held my gaze a second too long. She knew I wasn't lying. She also knew I wasn't telling the whole truth.

"They sent another letter," she said. "Yesterday. Rane's legal team. They want a face-to-face with the majority shareholder. Again."

"And?"

"I told them she was traveling. Again." She stepped back. "That's the third one I've deflected this quarter, Ma'am."

"I know."

"They're getting impatient."

"Good." I turned away from the mirror. "Let them be impatient for one more hour. After tonight, they won't need a meeting."

She nodded once and said nothing else.

The car was quiet on the way over. I watched the city move past the windows without really seeing it. I had been rehearsing calm for six years. Tonight it wasn't even an effort.

The venue came into view two blocks out. Glass-fronted, gold-lit from inside, guests moving around in suits and evening dresses behind the windows.

And then I saw him.

Rane. Near the front of the room. Hand in his pocket, shaking hands with someone, looking completely at ease.

"Go in first," I said. "Take your seat with the team. Don't look for me until I'm already at the mic."

"Ma'am."

"I'm fine."

She held my gaze for one second. Then she reached over and squeezed my hand, once, quick and firm, and got out of the car. I watched her cross the pavement and disappear through the front doors.

I sat alone. Ninety seconds. I counted them without checking my phone. I thought about the last six years not as a sequence of events but as one long exhale. The hospital. The nothing. The slow climb back from zero. The moment I realized the only way to take everything back was to buy it.

Then I got out of the car.

The doorman pulled the entrance open before I reached it.

The room shifted when I stepped inside. Conversations dipped. Heads turned, just slightly. I crossed the floor without slowing down. A waiter appeared at my elbow with champagne. I took a glass and kept moving. I did not look for Rane. I let him find me.

It took less than thirty seconds.

I felt his gaze land on me from across the room. I didn't turn. I kept moving. I stopped at the edge of the stage, set my glass on the nearest table, reached out, and lifted the microphone.

The room went silent.

I looked out at all of them. All those faces. All those people who had raised their glasses to Blackwood Enterprises for years and had never once seen the woman who actually owned the majority of it.

"Good evening," I said.

"My name is Isabella Hart." I paused. Let it sit. "Some of you may recognize the surname. Six years ago I was married to the man standing at the back of this room. Six years ago I walked out of this city with nothing. Not a share. Not a settlement. Not so much as a forwarding address."

I heard the shift in the room. The held breath.

"I am back now," I said. "And I own sixty percent of everything in this building."

The room erupted.

I stood at the microphone and let it happen.

Then I looked at Rane.

He had gone the colour of paper. Not dramatic. Real. The kind of shock where the blood actually leaves a person's face and what's left is just skin and stillness and a man trying very hard not to show how completely he's just been undone.

His jaw was set. His eyes were locked on mine.

I looked away.

To the left of the stage. Lily was standing beside Mara in a white dress, holding a small gift box with both hands. She was staring at me. Her expression wasn't fear. It wasn't confusion, exactly. It was something quieter. Like she was trying to place a sound she'd heard somewhere before.

Something behind my ribs contracted so sharply it almost showed on my face.

I looked away.

Mara's hand closed around Lily's shoulder, hard enough that the little girl shifted under the pressure.

"Do something," Mara hissed. Low, but not low enough.

Rane didn't move.

"What exactly would you suggest I do, Mara," he said. Not a question.

Mara's jaw tightened. She said nothing.

Across the room, two men in dark suits were moving toward me with the purposefulness of people who had been given instructions.

I stepped back from the microphone, reached into my clutch, and pulled out the document. Single folded page, thick paper. I held it up, not dramatic, just visible.

"The transfer agreement," I said, still close enough to the mic for it to carry. "Certified. Notarised. If anyone in this room would like to challenge my position, you are welcome to try."

The security men slowed. They looked at each other, then at the document, then back at whoever had sent them. A certified legal document held in front of two hundred witnesses changes the calculation significantly.

The room froze.

And then Rane started walking toward me.

Slowly. The crowd parted for him the way it always had, because even now he was still Rane Blackwood. His hands were at his sides. His shoulders were level. He was not rushing.

His face was no longer shocked.

It was something else entirely.

I stood at the edge of that stage and I held the document and I watched him come, and for the first time tonight, I felt something that was not calm.