Chapter 4

ISABELLA

“What do you think you are doing?” Rane said, his voice deep.

I smiled slowly. “And what does it look like? Are you shocked? Surprised? Or outsmarted?”

"We need to talk," Rane said. His voice was low enough that only I could hear it. "Isabella, now and private."

He had reached me before security did. One small movement of his hand and the guard stopped walking. Just like that. I had spent six years learning to read power because I had none of it. Rane still spoke it fluently.

"Why do I have to listen to you, my ex husband? I am not going anywhere privately with you tonight, I need to finish what I started" I said.

"Isabella!!!."

"Oops, Mr Thomas. Are you angry?” I asked, with a slight smile, that looks like mockery.  

“Isabella, tonight is not the night to take your revenge.” Rane said, his voice low.

“Whatever you want to say to me, you can arrange through my legal representative." I said, my voice filled with confidence.

He looked at me steadily. "Your legal representative has been a fiction for sex years. I think I deserve to speak to the actual person who has been doing this, and who exactly are you? Because this is not the real you."

"I have not been doing anything. I am a majority shareholder. I intend to be a fair one."

He said nothing to that. He just looked at me.

The room was still watching. Board members, guests, a photographer near the back with his camera still up. I could see Mara in my peripheral vision. She had moved Lily to the far corner and was speaking to her in a low controlled voice with one hand on her shoulder. Lily kept trying to look past her toward the stage.

"Just five minutes," I said.

Rane didn't react. No relief, no victory. He just turned and walked toward the corridor behind the stage, and I followed him.

The room we ended up in was a green room. Two chairs. A small table. A half-empty water jug someone had left behind. Rane closed the door.

He stood across from me and was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "You haven't changed one bit."

"You know that’s not true, Mr Thomas."

"No." He looked at me carefully, like he was trying to find something. "I mean you have really changed beyond my imagination. I just can't figure out where she went. The girl I married. Because the woman standing in front of me right now is someone completely different."

"The girl you married needed you to be a decent person," I said. "You failed her completely. You ruined her life, so what’s there to be shocked about?"

He didn't look away. He didn't argue. He just stood there and took it, which I had not expected, and I made sure I did not let it soften me.

"How long were you planning this?" he asked.

"Since the day I walked out of that hospital."

Something moved through his face. He controlled it quickly.

"Isabella—"

"Save whatever that sentence is," I said. "I have heard everything you could possibly say to me, Rane. In my head I have heard it a thousand times. None of it changes anything."

The room was very quiet. He put his hands in his pockets and looked at the floor for a second, then back at me.

"Then why are you here?" he said. "If nothing I say changes anything, why agree to five minutes?"

"Because I have things to say that I want you to hear without two hundred people watching."

He waited.

"My conditions," I said. "I will not interfere with day-to-day operations. I will vote on major decisions as a majority shareholder is entitled to. I will attend board meetings as required." I paused. "And I expect to have legal, documented access to my daughter."

His jaw tightened.

"You can fight me on it," I said, "or you can make it easy. Either way I have lawyers who have been preparing for both outcomes for years now."

"She doesn't know you," he said. His voice was quiet now. Not aggressive. Just quiet. "Whatever you think you're walking back into, she is a child and she doesn't know you as her mother."

"That is your fault," I said. "Not hers and not mine."

"Isabella, you left us, you left her alone."

"I was removed from her life with force. There is a difference. And you know that, so don’t you dare lie to my face."

He looked at me for a long moment. His jaw was still set, but something behind his eyes was different from earlier. Less fury. Something older and harder to name.

"Do you still hate me?" he said.

"What I feel about you is none of your business."

"I think I disagree with that."

"You can disagree as much as you like." I moved toward the door. "Have your lawyers contact mine. They have the contact details. They have had them for some time."

"Isabella." He said it quietly. "We can talk this out."

“You have nothing to say to me.” I said then, I opened the door and walked out.

The corridor was dim and cool after the heat of the room and the hall. I rounded the first corner and pressed one hand flat against the wall and breathed. 

I nearly walked directly into Lily.

She was standing alone in the middle of the corridor, still holding the small gift box with both hands, her white dress very bright under the low light. She had slipped away from Mara. She was looking up at me with those wide dark eyes that I had spent six years trying not to think too hard about because thinking too hard about them made the rest of it impossible to carry.

We both went completely still.

She looked up at me for a long moment. Then, very quietly, she said, "Are you the lady who owns everything?"