Callum.
The realization lands fully formed, so sharp, it almost makes her laugh.
Her mother isn’t afraid of the castle.Or Scotland.Or even the truth, not really.
She’s afraid of Callum.
Isla sinks down onto the edge of the bed, pressing her palms to her knees as she lets that idea unfold.It explains too much.The urgency.The pressure.The way her mother’s tone had changed the instant Callum’s name entered the conversation.
Men like him don’t need to say anything.
What did that mean?
Callum hasn’t filled Isla’s head with anything.If anything, he’s done the opposite, held back, stepped aside, refused to lead her anywhere she didn’t already intend to go.He hasn’t defended Keir blindly, but he hasn’t attacked him either.He’s let the evidence speak, even when it cost him.
That’s what makes him dangerous.
He doesn’t control the narrative.
He lets it unravel.
Isla leans back against the cushions and closes her eyes, uninvited memories surfacing, the feel of Callum’s mouth against hers in the storage room, the way his hands had come up like instinct rather than intent, the split second where she’d felt completely unguarded.
Not because he took anything.
Because he waited.
Her mother would hate that.
Alisa has always understood power as something you apply, not something you allow.She directs, schedules, manages, and anticipates.Isla has lived her entire life inside that current, moving forward because the water carried her there.
Callum is still water.
Unmovable.
Observant.
And Isla realizes something else, something colder.
Callum knows things her mother assumed died with Keir.
Not specifics.Not yet.But truths of character.Of pattern.Of fear.
If her mother believed Keir didn’t want a family, Callum’s very existence contradicts that.He is living proof that Keir showed up for his best friend’s son.That he stayed.That he committed.
Isla opens her eyes slowly.
That is why her mother wants her home.
Not because Isla is in danger.
Because Alisa is…
A knock sounds softly at her bedroom door.
Isla’s heart jumps before she can stop it.
She stands, smoothing her hands down the front of her sweater, irritated with herself for the reflex.She crosses the room and opens the door.
