She spent them looking out the window with her hands in her lap, which was the posture she used when she was thinking hard enough that her body needed to be very still to compensate. She turned the conversation over. She examined it from every angle available to her and found the same thing every time — Lucas hadn't been bluffing. He had the relationships, the reach, and the specific motivated interest required to follow through on every word he had said.The villa's front drive came into view and she realized she had no memory of the last ten minutes of the route.Marcus was in the entrance hall when she came through the door.Not waiting, exactly — he was moving from one room to another, a dish towel over one shoulder, in the middle of something domestic and unhurried — but he stopped when he saw her face and turned toward her with that attentive, settled patience that she had stopped being able to dismiss as easily as she had in the first week."There's dinner," he said. "You haven

"I know." Reynolds's voice was not unkind. "And I want you to know that I recognize the quality of work your firm brought to this." He looked at her with the steady, apologetic gaze of a man delivering news he didn't make. "But the way things currently stand, Ms. Morrison, I'm inclined to move toward the Steel offer. And I'd expect our partner firms to follow our lead." A pause. "I'd advise you to consider whether there are aspects of your current situation that could be — renegotiated. To create a cleaner path forward."He was being diplomatic.Diana knew exactly what aspects he meant.She had no counter. She had come here with her competence and her preparation and her four months of work and none of those things were the actual currency in play in this room, and she knew it, and Reynolds knew she knew it, and the conversation had the specific airless quality of a space where the real negotiation had already happened somewhere else entirely.She thanked him for his time.She took th

"Don't you speak to my daughter," she said. Her voice had the terrible, quiet precision of someone who had moved past shouting into something colder. She looked at Marcus with the accumulated fury of every interaction since the first morning — the checkbook, the birthday party, the contract, all of it — compressed and focused and aimed. "What did you do to my daughter?""Nothing," Marcus said. "She collapsed from exhaustion and malnutrition. I brought her to the best hospital in the city.""Malnutrition." Catherine repeated the word like it was an accusation. "She was perfectly healthy before you showed up in her house —""She wasn't eating," Marcus said. "I made food every morning and every evening for the past several days. She didn't eat it." A pause. "That's not something I can force.""Don't." Catherine took one step closer and put her finger up between them. "Don't stand there in your discount suit and explain my daughter's life to me. You have been nothing but a source of chaos

He looked at Marcus with the complicated expression of a man who had a history of physical encounters with the person in front of him and was currently in a hospital, which was inconvenient context."I'm here for Diana," Liam said. "Same as everyone.""You're not welcome," Marcus said simply."Excuse me —" Catherine started."He's not welcome," Marcus said, and did not look at Catherine when he said it, which was somehow worse than if he had argued with her. He kept his eyes on Liam with the particular, focused attention of someone who has been patient for a specific amount of time and is now conducting a precise inventory of how much remains.Liam's jaw tightened. He had brought his anger with him and was looking for somewhere to put it that didn't involve the memory of a hallway floor."You've got some nerve," Liam said, his voice dropping. "Diana is in a hospital bed and you're standing here playing bouncer like you have any right —""Liam." Marcus's voice didn't rise. "The next wo

"I said I'm fine." She looked at the IV line with the expression of someone who found its presence personally offensive. "You can go.""I'll stay.""Marcus." Her voice was even. "I'm awake. I'm stable. The doctors are handling it. There is no reason for you to —""There is," he said simply, and moved to the chair beside the bed and sat in it with the settled, unhurried manner of someone who had made a decision and filed it.Diana looked at the ceiling.Catherine slipped back through the door and closed it behind her, and the room became a different, more complicated quiet."Diana." Catherine sat on the other side of the bed and took her daughter's hand with the specific tenderness of a woman who saved it for moments like this — genuine underneath everything else, whatever else could be said. "Listen to me. You need to think about what you're doing. What all of this is costing you.""Mother —""The business," Catherine said, quietly now. No performance, no fury. Just the low, tired voi