Chapter 5

ISABELLA

"Miss, Are you taking the company away from us?" she asked, and her voice was so small and so serious that I forgot, for a full second, how to stand upright.

I turned.

She was six years old. White dress, white shoes, two neat braids. She was holding a gift box with both hands the way children hold things they have been told not to drop. She was looking at me like she was trying to solve something.

I crouched down so we were at the same level.

"Don’t be afraid. I don't own everything," I said. "Just a big part of the company and that doesn’t mean I am going to fire everyone working in the company too."

She thought about that for a moment.

"So not everything?"

"No. Not everything."

She nodded slowly, like that was a reasonable clarification. Then she tilted her head.

"Do you know my daddy?"

"Yes," I said. "I know your daddy."

"How come he looked like that when you talked to him?"

"Like what?"

She scrunched her nose, searching for the right word.

"I don't know. Scared, maybe. He's not usually scared of things."

"He wasn't scared," I said. "He was just surprised."

"Oh." She seemed to accept that. Her eyes moved over my face slowly, the way children look at things they find genuinely interesting. "You have nice eyes."

"So do you," I said.

She looked pleased but tried not to show it. She shifted the gift box in her arms.

"I'm Lily. What's your name?"

"Isabella."

She moved her lips around the syllables, tasting them. Then something lit up in her face.

"That's a flower name."

"It is."

"Like mine."

"Just like yours."

She smiled then. A real one, wide and open, the kind children have before they learn to be careful about showing it. Her whole face changed. And something in my chest pulled so hard it almost doubled me over.

I pressed my hands flat against my knees.

"Do you like flowers?" she asked.

"Very much. Do you?"

"Yellow ones," she said seriously. "Not pink. Pink ones are too much."

"That's a very specific opinion."

"I have a lot of those."

I almost laughed. I stopped myself.

"I can tell," I said.

She shifted on her feet, studying me. "Are you going to come to the party?"

"I'm already at the party."

"No, I mean my own party." She tilted her chin toward the corridor behind her. "The party with the cake. Daddy said I could have the small room. With the yellow tablecloth."

"That sounds lovely."

"It is." She paused. "You could come, and I would love to see you there."

The invitation landed somewhere it wasn't supposed to. I kept my face very still.

"Maybe later, but I promise to show up" I said.

She looked like she might push it. Then her attention shifted past my shoulder. I watched her face change before I heard the footsteps.

"Lily."

Mara's voice. Flat and quiet. The kind of quiet that was not calm at all.

I stood up slowly.

Mara was at the end of the corridor. Her face was completely blank, the careful blankness of someone very angry in a public space. She walked toward us at a pace that was controlled and deliberate and somehow worse than if she had run.

She put her hand on Lily's shoulder.

"Get your ass here, now."

"We were just talking mommy," Lily said.

"I know." Mara's voice didn't change. "Come here. And how many times have I warned you not to talk to strangers."

Lily looked at me. The open happy face from thirty seconds ago was already gone. Something careful had taken its place, something practiced, something a six-year-old should not yet know how to do.

"Goodbye, Mrs Isabella," she said. Small and flat.

"Goodbye, Lily."

She followed Mara without looking back. Mara put one hand between her shoulder blades and guided her down the corridor and around the corner and they were gone.

Mara never looked at me. Not once.

She didn't have to. She knew exactly what she had just walked into.

I stood there for a moment. The corridor was empty. The sound of the party leaked faintly from the main hall, music and glass and voices.

I walked back in.

Lucas was near the exit. He saw my face and said nothing. He just held out his hand.

I took it.

"Isabella. Do you want to leave?" he asked quietly.

"Not yet, and I would love to warn Mara not to be harsh on my daughter, she is calling her names that kids shouldn’t even hear about."

“Isabella, you are showing your weakness.” Lucas said, his voice low.

“Lucas.” I said, with a teary eye. “Lily, my child is my weakness and I don’t like how she is being treated.”

“We will do something about that, but for now, stay strong and don’t spoil all you’ve been planning for years.” He said, his voice low.

I nodded and wiped my tears. 

“What else do you need me to do for you?” He asked, his voice deep and flat.

“Just stay with me.” 

He didn't ask anything else. He stood close and I was grateful for it.

Then I looked up.

Rane was at the far edge of the room. He was watching me. Not casually. Not the way you watch someone across a crowded party. He was watching me the way you watch something you don't know what to do with.

Mara was beside him.

She was speaking quietly into his ear. Her lips barely moved. Whatever she was saying, she said it without looking at him, her eyes fixed somewhere across the room. Cool and deliberate.

I watched Rane's face.

He listened. And then, slowly, the expression he had been wearing, something open, something I didn't yet have a word for, closed. Like a door being pulled shut from the inside.

He looked away from me.

I tightened my hand around Lucas's.

"Now," I said. "Let's go now."