LOGINThird person PovVictoria called Lydia at half past ten on Friday morning.Lydia picked up on the second ring. “I have already read it.”“Then you know.” Victoria’s voice was smooth. Too smooth, the way it got when something underneath it was working very hard not to show. “A larger building, Lydia. She lost everything and she signed a lease for something bigger within one week. Nathan Price has written about it as though she has performed some kind of miracle.”“I know what he wrote.” Lydia moved to her window. Below her the city went about its morning, entirely unbothered. “The industry is behind her.” The smoothness in Victoria’s voice developed an edge, fine and sharp, like a crack in glass. “Design houses. The hospital. Buyers reaching out without being asked. We burned her company to the ground and it has made her more visible than she has ever been.”“It is a setback.” Lydia kept her voice level. “Not a failure.”“At least the exhibition won’t be held anytime soon. Most of the
One week after the fire, Eternal Jewelry Designs had a new address.The building on Mercer Street was larger than anything I had ever operated out of. Five floors. A ground-floor showroom with twice the display capacity of the original. Design offices on the second. A client suite on the third floor that actually deserved the name. And the fourth and fifth floors combined into one open, high-ceilinged atelier flooded with the kind of north-facing light that made every workspace I had used before feel like a rehearsal.I signed the lease four days after the fire.My father called in the morning when the paperwork went through.“Mercer Street,” he said.“Yes, Dad,” I replied, sighing heavily.“That is a significant space,” he remarked“It is,” I said. “Which is exactly why I chose it.”He went quiet for a moment. I knew that quiet. It was the quiet of a man deciding whether to say the thing he had already decided to say. “I have contractors, Roberta. Good ones. Let me send them over. Yo
The study felt smaller with all four of us in it.Carlos stood at the head of the room with a folder open in his hands. He had not sat down. He never sat down when he had something to deliver. He stood the way he always stood when the information was serious — straight-backed, voice low, eyes moving between the three of us with the careful attention of a man who understood that what he said next was going to matter.Ray was in the chair to my left. Anthony was near the window, arms folded, jacket open. I was at the desk with both hands flat on the surface and nothing in front of me except the folder I had not opened yet because Carlos had asked me to wait.I waited.Carlos looked at me first. Then he began.“The fire was deliberately set,” he said. “Two accelerant points. One at the base of the east wall, one behind the third display column on the north side. Both positioned to create a burn pattern consistent with an electrical fault originating from the wiring conduit above.” He tu
I did not argue when he said to come with him.That alone told me how far gone I was. I had spent seven months arguing about everything. About control and access and how much help was too much help and whose plan this was and who got to decide when to move. I had argued with Ray and pushed back on Carlos and held Anthony at a careful, deliberate arm’s length every time he stepped too close to the parts of this I needed to carry alone.I got into his car without a word, my knees trembling as I lowered myself into the seat. My heart raced, and I was so tired I could barely think straight.The city passed outside the window. I watched it without seeing it. My coat still smelled of smoke. My hands were steady in my lap and I was distantly aware of that, of the steadiness, of how much effort it was costing me to maintain something that looked like composure when everything underneath it was rubble.Anthony did not try to fill the silence.That was the thing about him. He understood th
Carlos pulled us around to the far side of the building, away from the crowd and the noise, where the wall blocked the light and nobody could see or hear us.Anthony stayed close. His jaw was set so tight a muscle jumped twice beneath his cheek and went still.Carlos looked at me directly. “The fire marshal is calling it electrical. A wiring fault in the upper floor. Origin point near the east wall.”“But,” Ray said.“I had my own man on scene before they sealed the area.” Carlos kept his voice low and flat. “He found something the marshal will not look for because he has no reason to look.” He reached into his jacket and took out his phone. “I need more time to confirm all of it. But you need to see this now.”He turned the screen toward us.Two photographs. The first showed the origin point of the fire at the base of the east wall. The burn pattern spread outward from it in a shape that had nothing to do with a wiring fault. Too contained at the source. Too deliberate in its direct
The call came at five forty-three in the morning.I was already awake.I had been sitting at the edge of my bed since three, the unknown message still open on my phone screen. ‘Sweet dreams, Roberta. Tomorrow will be a day you’ll never forget.’ I had read it so many times that the words had stopped looking like words and started looking like a warning I did not yet know how to answer.The voice on the other end said my name once. Then: “The building is on fire.”I did not ask which building.The message had already told me.I do not remember putting on my coat or storming out of my room. My first clear memory is my hands gripping the wheel and the city sliding past the windows, dark and empty, the streets mine and whatever I was driving toward mine too, and the 3am message sitting in the back of my throat like something I had swallowed wrong.I had the window down.The smell reached me two streets away.In a way that reached the back of my throat before the smoke reached my eyes. My f
Roberta’s PovI set my coffee cup down and read through it once more, slowly, the way you read something you have worked very hard for and want to feel properly.Leo had not pushed back on a single clause. Not the veto power. Not the public acknowledgment. Not even the repayment conditions that ga
Chapter 20"Did you see how he looked?" Ray's voice carried pure satisfaction. "He hasn't slept in days. He's falling apart at the seams. Our plan worked beyond what we expected."His smirk was sharp. Vicious. Everything I felt inside but couldn't show while Leo was watching.The office door burst
The plane touched down in Litsville with a gentle thud. I stepped onto familiar ground for the first time in five years. Fresh air swept through me, breathing new hope into my battered existence.But my breathing hitched when my phone buzzed. All the air left my lungs. My chest tightened as I stare
Leo's hands wouldn't stop shaking. The image of the blood soaked item burned in his mind. The question pounded through his head with every heartbeat.What happened to her? He burst into his house, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His eyes darted around wildly.The house felt wrong. Cold. Empty.He







