Isla doesn’t look away from the window.Her voice is quiet, controlled, cutting.
“He left first.”
Alisa’s breath catches.For a moment, Isla thinks her mother might say something cruel, something honest.
Instead, Alisa stares at her, eyes bright with something she refuses to name.
“You don’t understand,” Alisa says.
Isla finally turns her head.“Then explain it.”
Alisa opens her mouth.
Closes it.
Her gaze flicks to Isla’s medal, as if even that had become dangerous.
“We’ll talk when we get home,” Alisa says tightly.“Not here.”
Isla’s lips thin.“You mean when you can control the narrative?”
Alisa’s hand curls into a fist in her lap.“I mean when it’s safe.”
Safe.
The word makes Isla’s skin prickle.
She leans back against the leather seat, posture still elegant even in exhaustion.Outside, the streetlights slip past in an even rhythm.The limo’s motion is steady, controlled, unlike the night.
Isla presses two fingers lightly against the cold of her medal, grounding herself.
She won.
That is real.
Keir MacLaren’s death is also real, apparently.
But Isla refuses to let that reality rewrite her own.
He had chosen absence.
He had chosen everything but her.
He doesn’t get to claim a place in her heart now just because the world wants a tragic story.
Isla closes her eyes briefly, listening to the hum of tires on pavement, feeling the weight of the medal at her throat.
Somewhere beyond the tinted glass, the ocean keeps moving, indifferent.
And somewhere, far away, a man who has never been a father has died, leaving behind consequences Isla does not yet understand.
Chapter2
Callum Fraser’s cell phone rings with an insistence that breaks the quiet of the car somewhere outside Glasgow, past the last strip of fast-food lights, past the exit that smells like diesel and boiled peanuts, into that long stretch of highway where the world turns into lanes and sky and the steady hum of tires.The radio is low, not music, never music when he’s trying not to think, just voices filling the air without asking anything of him.
His phone buzzes against the console.
He glances down.Unknown number.
