I didn’t need her to name my mother.
But of course.
A bitter taste flooded my tongue. “She keeps on finding ways to sell me. First to my grandparents, then to Denise, now to the press. She didn’t just betray me. She monetised me.”
Mila made a strangled sound behind me. “Dix?—”
“I’m fine.” I wasn’t. Not even close. But I shoved it down. There wasn’t time to break.
Another alert flashed. A live clip, emblazoned across the top of the Marchant drama that was otherwise dominated by me.
I tapped it.
Wallace burst from the solicitor’s office, his tie loose, face flushed, cameras and phones shoved in his direction.
“My father’s wishes are clear. I’ll run it,” he snapped. “Marchant Haulage isn’t going anywhere. I’ll make sure of that.”
Reporters shouted over each other. Someone booed.
“Are you confirming the company will continue operations?”
In a one-eighty from his fuss in the meeting, Wallace puffed out his chest. “I am. Whatever mistakes my father made, I will resurrect Marchant Haulage from the ashes. I’ll be the one in charge.”
The clip cut. Silence filled the room.
Mila stared at the screen. “He can’t be serious.”
Except he was. In the space of minutes, he’d changed his game plan from resting back and letting the money sprinkle over him to rising up and taking it.
And something shifted inside me. Not panic or fear, but different.
I released a breath. “He thinks it’s a toy. Something to play with.”
Lovelyn folded her arms. “He’ll run it straight into the ground.”
“That isn’t why he wants it,” Mila added quietly.
I stared between them. A thought formed. Not fully shaped, but there. What if?—
No.Not now.
Tyler needed me, and I was messing around with headlines and drama from a family I owed nothing to.
Someone thumped at the door. I jumped to open it, letting Arran in, Kane behind him.
“I think something’s happened to Tyler,” I burst out.
Arran’s careful gaze took me in. Since returning here, I hadn’t spoken to the skeleton crew’s leader. Barely seen him. Now, he was a lifeline.
“Tell me when you last saw him.”
I ran through us returning to the warehouse the previous evening and how we’d used one of the cam girl rooms. Heat painted my cheeks in a way that would never have happened in the past. But what we had wasn’t work. It was intimate and personal.
“I woke alone, back in our bed here,” I finished.
Arran inclined his head. “You’ve heard nothing since?”
“Not a word, and he hasn’t answered my calls. I figured he was just busy with work, and with handling Lex’s body.”
