They both look at her.
“I didn’t ask for this,” Isla says, voice tight.“I didn’t ask to be born.I didn’t ask to be ignored.And I didn’t ask to be dragged halfway across the world to stand in his house while strangers tell me who he was.”
Callum studies her then, really studies her, and for the first time, his anger wavers.
For a split second, Isla sees something else in his eyes.
Recognition.
Then it’s gone.
“Welcome to the club,” he says coolly.“The Keir MacLaren family club.”
Alisa exhales sharply.“We’ll be speaking with the solicitor now.”
She grips Isla’s arm and pulls her away.
Isla doesn’t look back.
She feels him watching her.
Her pulse refuses to settle.
Her anger burns bright and messy and unresolved.
Her first impression of whoever the hell he is, is catastrophic.
And the worst part?
Somewhere beneath the fury and grief and exhaustion, Isla is painfully aware of one thing she does not want to examine.
This man, this stranger who loved her father, matters.
And that complicates everything.
Chapter4
Callum has never hated a crowd the way he despises this one.
They line the stone path to the chapel, spilling across the castle grounds as if this is a pilgrimage instead of a funeral.Black coats and dark sunglasses.Camera lenses peeking from behind scarves.Fans clutching vinyl albums and handwritten signs, faces reverent, tear-streaked, ecstatic.
Some of them are singing.
Not recorded.Not polished.
Keir’s songs, off-key, heartfelt, uninvited, float through the cold air like a wake that refuses to end.
Callum stands near the chapel doors, hands shoved deep into his coat pockets, wearing his finest kilt, jaw locked so tightly, his temples ache.Every note feels like a theft.
This isn’t theirs.
Keir was theirs on stage.On tape.On the internet.On the radio.
But this, this is supposed to be private.
Instead, it’s a spectacle.
Celebrities drift past, each one carefully composed in grief.Actors Keir once dated.Musicians who once fought with him, loved him, nearly killed him with excess, and then laughed about it years later.Producers and industry men who owe entire careers to Keir’s musical instincts.
