“Consider it done, sir. Shall we move on to the agenda?”
“Please.”
“Sir,” Icarus says when he calls me again. “Your four o’clock appointment is here.” I glance at the tablet beside me: it’s two-thirty—and my four o’clock appointment is my mother.
“Tell her to come back at four. I won’t see her before then.”
“Yes, sir.” He hangs up, and I return to the spreadsheets.
Still, the next hour and a half passes far too quickly. I barely blink before my assistant calls again, asking permission to let Lysandra in.
She hasn’t even finished crossing my office threshold before I know she’s furious. Over the years, our relationship has deteriorated as far as it possibly could. If there’s one thing I can truly thank my ex-fiancée for, it’s breaking my habit of ignoring Lysandra’s problematic behavior.
The truth is, if my mother already showed possessive tendencies before, after my relationship with Nina she became controlling and invasive. And when I kept blocking her attempts to force a role in my life, Lysandra turned nearly obsessive.
“Is this what I’ve been reduced to?” she snaps, arms rigid at her sides, trapped by the sleeveless green dress she’s wearing. “Someone who has to wait to enter a room in her own company? I’m not your servant, Nero!”
“No, you’re not. Employees are usually good at honoring agreements,” I say, eyes back on my screen. “They rarely show up an hour and a half early for meetings—because they have other things to do.” Even without looking at her, I know she doesn’t clutch her chest in feigned offense. She knows that kind of manipulation works even less now than it used to.
“I can’t take this anymore,” she says, sounding genuinely exhausted, pulling my gaze back to her restless figure. “This is absurd. In what world does a mother need an appointment to visit her son? I’m not your employee, Nero! I’m not a business deal! I’m your mother! I raised you—and you don’t receive me at your home, you don’t answer my calls, you barely speak to me unless I’m on your calendar.” She lets out a bitter laugh. “Which, mysteriously, happens no more often than every three months. You don’t even try to hide that you limit even that!” She unloads as if I were responsible for this situation, not her toxic behavior—on display right now. “You haven’t visited us in almost a year.You haven’t seen your father in over a year, Nero!” She throws her hands up. “You skip dinners, lunches, parties. You missed my birthday. Do you have any idea what people thought?”
There it is. I laugh, bitter.
“That’s your problem? That I missed your birthday? That’s why we’re having this conversation, Lysandra? So every time I miss one of your birthdays I should expect this kind of retaliation? Consider me duly threatened.” I add. Lysandra closes her eyes and clenches her fists, exhaling loudly in a rare display of losing control. “Is that all?”
“I’m not threatening you, Nero,” she says when she can, turning to stare at the windows. Then she laughs again, bitterly. “I thought that woman leaving would fix everything.” The mere mention of Nina flares my nostrils.
“We’re not having this conversation.”
“And why not?” she asks with a dry laugh. “It’s no secret you’ve become obsessed with her, is it? Or do you think I don’t know about all the money you spend funding this useless search that’s gone on for years?”
“I thought limiting our interactions was the best way we could at least maintain a relationship. But if you’re still going to interfere in my life, maybe we should suspend them altogether.”
“I just want my son back!” she shouts. Lysandra shouts, and I cross my arms, wondering what pushed her this far—because it’s the first time I’ve ever heard her raise her voice. “That’s all! You want to keep hunting that woman across the world? Hunt. You want to test the child and see if it’s yours? Test. Bring her homeif it is! Whatever it takes for you to become the man you used to be—just do it, and do it now!”
I would laugh if I had the energy to explain that what she wants is impossible. There’s nothing in the world that can make me who I was again. They haven’t invented time machines.
I look at my computer screen before replying.
“Your time is up.”
***
I slide my finger across the tablet, moving to the next listing. It shows a spacious primary suite, but one look at the whirlpool tub is enough to decide—definitely not. I close it and open the next file the broker sent.
It isn’t a penthouse but a house, and that appeals to me. I swipe through the photos again and again, discovering the spaces and losing interest quickly as my mind drifts into its favorite pastime—traveling to an alternate reality where Nina is still here.
In it, the three of us live in the house my eyes are now staring at without seeing. Our child is running through the garden, and Nina wears a worried look, afraid he’ll get to the pool—but we’re so close to him that it could never happen. Not without us stopping it.
In my head, it’s a boy. It’s always a boy, even though I never got to learn the baby’s sex. She said she didn’t think it was a girl. I close the presentation and lift my eyes to the wall.
A deep breath escapes me, and I spend a moment blind to everything around me. Loud voices passing my door as it opens yank me out of an impossible future and back into a bitter present.
“I swear to God, if I’d known you were going to turn into a nomad, I’d never have signed up to be your friend, Nero,” Drako complains, barging in without knocking, ignoring the refusal written all over my face.
“You’re really moving again?” Apollo asks, following Drako in the small invasion of my office. “You changed places less than six months ago!”
I set the tablet aside, waiting for the third who won’t be long—and in three, two, one…
