t it contained-her son's face, reduced to pixels and glass, wai

her shoulder with careful neutrality. "I told him I needed to discuss

n. The call button glowed g

against her collarbone, a nervous habit she'd forgotten he ha

look up. "How do you pr

food she didn't taste, dressing in clothes that fit perfectly because apparently he'd kept her sizes on file, or maybe he'd bought new on

d through an MBA and straight into the family business. Single, according to Jordi's careful recitation,

ned when he said it, suggesting the studying was theoretical at best. Benjamin at Oxford, something about economics

hes of people who shared

im," sh

ss

peration. "Jordi, please. I need to see him. Even i

t the sofa cushion shift as he sat beside her, close enough that their thi

remember that he doesn't know.

ook at him, saw the fear and hope warring in his expression, the desperate need to control

es, and hated herself for it. But she didn't apologize. Couldn't. Not when her heart was hammering ag

essed th

century, another world. Isadora counted them-one, two, three-her breath shallow, her

d on the f

was bea

nothing could have prepared her for this-this stranger with her husband's jaw and her own eyes,

shed, almost, in a way that suggested expensive education and

ay-green that she'd inherited from her mother-found her face on the screen

led wit

something raw and furious underneath. "What

and reaching for the tablet, but Isadora held

e sounded strange to her own ears, t

loser to his own camera, his expression contorted with something that looked almos

, the voice he used in boardrooms and hostile take

e sound of a young man who'd learned young that emotion was weakness and was failing that lesson in real time

ost

s hand close around her wrist with warning pressure, but she couldn't look away fro

e shouting. "Did you plan that, Father? Did you think that detail would convince me? That seeing some stranger in her clothes, in

's n

the little boy who'd lost his mother and never learned how to mourn. "I don't care what you're paying her.

een wen

he sudden silence. She felt Jordi take the device from her unresisting hands,

n't respond.

he though

t she was