The morning air outside was cool and clean and completely indifferent to everything happening inside the Pedro mansion. Julian walked to the car, jacket in hand, and was reaching for the door when his phone rang.
He looked at the screen. Mother.
He answered.
"Julian." His mother’s voice ca through imdiately, steady on the surface the way it always was, but underneath it, if you knew her well enough, sothing tight. Sothing is working very hard to stay steady.
"Can you co to the company? Your uncle Kalian has called an ergency eting. Your aunt Claire as well." A pause. "I have a bad feeling about this."
Julian stood by the car door.
"They’re making a move," he said. It wasn’t a question.
"They are not going to stop," his mother said.
"You know how they are. The mont they sense any kind of opening..." She stopped herself. And in the silence Julian could hear the thing she wasn’t saying.
The weight of it. His mother who had never once in his mory asked anyone to fight her battles for her, who had buried a husband, buried a son, lost two grandchildren she never even got to hold properly and who was standing in a company boardroom this morning facing n who shared her blood and were sharpening knives anyway.
"Mother." His voice was firm but quiet.
"Listen to . I’m going to handle Kalian. I’m going to handle Claire and every other person in that room who thinks this is their mont." He opened the car door and got in, phone still to his ear. "You just hold things together a little longer. That’s all I’m asking. Can you do that?"
"You know I can." A beat. "But Julian..."
"I’m sending Jack to you this morning. And more security. You will not be standing in that building without people I trust on every side of you."
A short exhale from her. Not quite relief. More like a woman accepting help she was grateful for but would never ask for directly.
"And right now," Julian continued, starting the engine, "I’m on my way to et the third mother. I told Amara everything last night." He paused. "Once I have the baby once I bring Justina ho, I can end all of this. All of them. At once."
Silence on the line for a mont.
"How did Amara take it?" his mother asked.
Julian looked through the windscreen at the long driveway ahead of him.
"Not good," he said quietly. "We all knew it wouldn’t be easy. But she’d been thinking I couldn’t connect with the baby because she wasn’t mine, so I couldn’t keep it from her any longer. She deserved the truth."
His mother made a sound. Low and understanding. The sound of a woman who had seen enough of life to know that so pain couldn’t be prevented, only witnessed.
"She’s strong," his mother said. Not as a platitude. As a fact.
"She is," Julian agreed. "She just doesn’t know it right now."
He pulled slowly out of the driveway.
"Mother." His voice softened just slightly. "Be safe. Watch your back in that room and don’t let them see anything on your face. You know how they read people."
"Darling," his mother said, and there was the faintest dry edge to it, "I taught those people everything they know. And not nearly everything I know."
Julian almost smiled.
"Good," he said. "Keep it that way."
"You be careful too," she said. The dry edge gone now. Just his mother. "Please."
"I will."
"And Julian..."
"I know, Mother."
A pause.
"I love you," she said simply.
"I love you too." He tightened his grip on the wheel. "I’ll call you when I’m done."
The line went quiet.
Julian drove.
The city opened up around him, traffic, morning light, the ordinary world going about its ordinary business and sowhere inside all of it, a woman who had his daughter and didn’t yet know what was coming.
He pressed his foot down.
The coffee shop was small and warm.
The kind of place that had probably been there for twenty years, mismatched chairs, the sll of ground coffee soaked into the walls, a handwritten nu board behind the counter that hadn’t changed in a while. Julian’s assistant had chosen it deliberately. Neutral. Quiet. The kind of place nobody looks twice at anyone.
Julian walked in.
He was calm on the outside, he was always calm on the outside, but underneath it sothing was moving that he hadn’t felt in weeks. Sothing close to hope. The particular, dangerous kind that arrives when you are almost at the end of a very long road and you can just begin to make out what’s waiting there.
Justina.
He was going to bring her ho today. He could feel it. He looked around the café.
A young couple by the window, heads bent together over one phone, laughing at sothing. Another couple near the counter, the man stirring a coffee, the woman with her coat still on like she hadn’t decided yet if she was staying. And then near the back, half turned away a woman in a purple dress. Blonde hair, neatly kept. Sitting alone with a cup in front of her that she didn’t appear to be drinking.
Julian checked his watch.
He was exactly on ti. Not early, not late. He looked around again, slower this ti, as if he had missed soone.
A mother, he didn’t know what he had been picturing exactly. Soone who looked like they were carrying sothing, maybe. Soone whose face would give sothing away.
None of the people here matched whatever shape he had built in his mind.
He reached into his jacket for his phone. He would call his assistant, get the third mother’s direct number, confirm she was even here...
And then the woman in the purple dress turned around.
Julian went still.
She wasn’t what he had expected. He couldn’t have said what he had expected, but it wasn’t this. She recognised him before he confird anything. He could see it. Her chin lifted slightly. Her hands, which had been wrapped around the cup, moved to her lap.
Julian had the phone halfway to his ear when the woman in the purple dress stood up. Familiar. Like soone who had just spotted an old friend across a room at a party and couldn’t quite believe their own eyes.
"Wait..." She stopped a few feet away, her head tilting slightly. The serious expression from across the café had completely rearranged itself into sothing that was almost amused. "Julian?"
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