CHAPTER THREE

The Berg estate didn't do gentle reintroductions.

By six the next morning, Mother had me in the east wing conference room with three lawyers, two analysts, and a forty-seven page portfolio summary. My coffee was hot. The lighting was not forgiving. Nobody asked how I slept.

"We'll start with the European holdings," said Dominic, our head of legal, sliding a folder across the table. "Then the restructuring proposals—"

"Give us the room," Mother said.

They filed out without a word.

She waited until the door clicked shut. Then her face did something that wasn't strategy.

"Your grandmother built this from nothing," she said. "After your grandfather—" a pause, "—after what he did."

"I know the story, Mother."

"Do you?" She folded her hands. "He didn't just betray her personally. He tried to strip the company from under her while she was grieving. He thought she'd fold." A beat. "She took everything. Left him with his name and nothing else."

I stared at my coffee.

"Dad was different," I said quietly.

"Your father was a good man." Her voice softened, fractionally. "He understood what it meant to walk into this family. He never tried to own what wasn't his." Her eyes found mine. "He would have hated watching you make yourself small for someone."

I didn't answer. Outside the windows, the grounds stretched wide and immaculate—the gardens my grandmother had planted, the walls she had built, the name she had refused to surrender.

I had run from all of it at twenty-two. Told myself I wanted a normal life, a love without a dynasty attached. I had been so certain I'd found it.

Stupid. Devoted. As advertised.

My phone had been going since Thursday night. I'd turned the screen face-down, but I'd read them anyway.

Thursday, 9:47 p.m.: You coming?

Friday, 12:31 a.m.: Why aren't you answering.

Friday, 10:15 a.m.: I don't know what this is about but it's starting to get old.

Saturday, 8:02 p.m.: I miss you. Call me.

Monday, 4:17 p.m.: Or don't. Your choice.

Tuesday, 9:55 a.m.: This is childish, Rachel. Whatever point you're making, it's made.

I put the phone in my desk drawer and left it there.

The days took on a shape. Mornings: financials, legal briefings, years of company history compressed into hours. Afternoons: meetings with faces that recognized me with careful neutrality. Evenings: dinner with Mother, where every conversation was also a lesson.

"Your instincts are still good," she said one night, reviewing my notes on the Meridian account. "You just stopped trusting them."

"I trusted the wrong person."

"Yes." She didn't soften it. "You did."

I appreciated that about her. She never once said I told you so, and somehow that was worse.

It was the ninth day when she set down her pen with an expression I recognized: the look she wore before delivering something she'd been sitting on.

"There's something you should know," she said, "about why I'm particularly interested in Nathan Voss."

I went still.

"Three years ago," she said, "I moved the Halcyon contracts to his firm. The infrastructure pipeline—Southeast Asia, the new terminals." A pause. "I did it because you were with him, and I thought—" another pause, "—I thought if I gave him proximity to this family's business, he might eventually deserve to know the rest."

The room was very quiet.

"You gave him those contracts," I said slowly, "for me."

"I gave him an opportunity," she corrected. "He took them and told no one where they came from. He has been dining out on that portfolio for two years. It made him look indispensable to his board." She held my gaze. "Indispensable enough for Elena Marchetti's father to consider him a worthy son-in-law."

I understood then. Not just the anger—the architecture of it.

"You want them back."

"I want you to take them back." She slid an envelope across the table. "His engagement party is Saturday. You'll be there."

I opened it. Cream card. Gold embossing. Black tie.

"He doesn't know you're home," Mother said. "He doesn't know who you are. And he is about to celebrate the most important night of his career in a room full of people you grew up calling aunts and uncles."

I turned the card over.

"He won't recognize me," I said. "It's been four years. I look—"

"Different," she agreed. "Better." A pause. "And considerably more dangerous."

For the first time in two weeks, I smiled.

"I'll need a dress," I said.

"Already taken care of," said Mother.