Chapter 8

ISABELLA 

"She knew," I said. "She knew I was buying those shares. This wasn't a reaction to the gala. She was ready for me."

My lawyer, Daniel, did not blink. He sat across from me with the file open between us and let me finish. The afternoon light came in flat through the blinds. It sat on the table in thin strips.

"The intermediary is two removes from the original instruction," he said. "Whoever placed the call to Doyle was careful."

"How careful?"

"Corporate shell. Registered in Delaware. One director, no employees, dormant for three years before this."

"Dormant until someone needed it."

"Yes."

I looked at the file. Doyle. Sixty-one years old. Retired. He had held four percent of Blackwood for eleven years before he went public with his criticism of Rane's expansion play. That article had cost him. Rane had made sure of it in small, quiet ways that never left a paper trail. I had bought his stake fourteen months ago. He had no reason to speak to anyone about the transaction. None. Unless someone reached out first.

"He was contacted," I said. "Someone told him what to say and when to say it."

"That's our working theory."

"It's not a theory, Daniel. It's what happened." I sat back. "Trace it. Take whatever time you need. Do it right. When we move on this, I want it to be the last move."

He nodded once.

I left.

Lucas was not home when I got in. Client dinner. He had sent a message two hours ago saying not to wait up. I did not eat. I sat on the couch in the dark with my coat still on and I thought about Mara. I thought about the night of my wedding. About the way she had looked that morning, dressed for someone else's celebration, already knowing things I would not know for years. I thought about the photograph she had placed in my coat pocket. Not sent. Placed. She had been close enough to touch me and I had not noticed.

She had been ten steps ahead of everyone around her for a long time.

I thought: not anymore.

Three days later. The board meeting.

The agenda came the night before. I read it top to bottom, then read it again. The last line stopped me. Personal matter. Five minutes. Private session.

I sat with that for a long time.

Then I opened the email and typed my reply.

"The personal item goes at the start. Not the end."

His response came in two minutes.

"Fine."

The meeting ran its ordinary course. Quarterly figures. Two operational updates. A vote on a vendor contract that passed without debate. When the last item closed, the room cleared. The other board members filed out with their folders and their quiet conversations. Then it was just the two of us.

Rane put a photograph on the table between us.

I looked at it before I looked at him. A school event. Lily in the middle distance, caught mid-laugh at something off-camera. Her whole face open. Both eyes creased at the corners. The kind of smile a child produces when they have completely forgotten they are being watched.

"That's the only photograph I have ever seen of her smiling like that," Rane said. "I pulled it from an old school newsletter. She was nine."

I said nothing.

"Do you remember when she stopped?" he said. "Because I've been trying to place it. And I can't."

"What is your point, Rane."

"I've been watching her since the gala." He leaned forward, both forearms flat on the table. "Something is wrong with her, Isabella. I told myself for months it was a phase. Teenage girls, difficult years. I told myself I was reading too much into it." His jaw tightened. "I don't think I was reading too much into it."

"She is your daughter. What you decide to do about your daughter's wellbeing is your business."

"She is your daughter too."

Silence.

A long one.

He did not fill it. He let it sit there.

"I know about the break room," he said. "I'm not going to use it against you. I'm not here for that today." He looked at the photograph and then back at me. "I want to know what she said. That's all I'm asking."

I looked at his face. I had spent years learning to read it. Every tell. Every mask. What I saw right now did not fit any category I had ever filed him under. It was not strategy. It was not performance.

It was a father who had just noticed something was wrong with his child and had sat with that knowledge long enough that it had started to hollow him out.

I looked at the photograph.

I looked at it for three seconds longer than I meant to.

"She said she felt like she belonged to someone," I said. "Like a piece of property that had been sorted into the right column."

His jaw moved. He looked away from me. He looked at the far wall and he stayed there for a moment.

Then the meeting was over. Neither of us said so. It simply was.

Lucas was home when I got back. His jacket was still on. He was sitting on the couch the way people sit when they have been waiting and trying not to look like they have been waiting.

He looked at me when I walked in.

"I need to tell you something," he said.

I set my bag down. "Tell me."

"I ran into Mara tonight." He watched my face. "At Anello's. She was there when I arrived. I don't think it was coincidence."

"It wasn't."

"She came to my table. Sat down without being asked." He exhaled. "She was very calm about it. Very—" He searched for the word. "Pleasant. That's what made it strange. She told me that your plan to reclaim Lily was going to destroy my relationship, my career, and my peace of mind. In that order. She said I should encourage you to take a settlement and walk away from the whole thing."

I waited.

"She was smiling the entire time she said it," he said. "Not—" He stopped. "It wasn't a cruel smile. It was like she was doing me a favour."

The apartment was very quiet.

"What do you want to do?" he said.

I looked at him. I thought about Mara in a restaurant, choosing the right table, choosing the right moment, choosing Lucas specifically because she knew exactly what he was to me and exactly how much pressure the right words in the right mouth could generate. I thought about how long she had been planning this particular move. I thought about the smile he was describing.

I knew that smile.

"Nothing tonight," I said. "Tonight we don't do anything at all. But after tomorrow, we never know what might happen."