Chapter 1
Isla counted the exits before she counted the place settings. Old habit. The kind that never fully leaves once a room has taught you it can turn on you.
Her mother’s dining room hadn’t changed in ten years. Same china, same crystal, same watercolor of a lighthouse nobody in the family had ever actually visited, hanging slightly crooked above the sideboard. Isla straightened it on her way past, out of muscle memory more than care, and took the seat at the end of the table, closest to the door.
Beatrice’s chair sat empty. It always did, for the first five minutes. Beatrice believed in entrances the way other people believed in punctuality.
“She’s just running behind,” their mother said, topping off a wine glass that didn’t need it. “The gala ran long.”
“The gala always runs long,” Isla said.
Their father didn’t look up from his phone. He hadn’t looked up from anything Isla said in years. She’d stopped waiting for it.
Then the door swung open, and Beatrice arrived exactly the way she always did. Like the room had been holding its breath for her.
“Sorry, sorry.” She wasn’t. She never was. She kissed their mother’s cheek, touched their father’s shoulder in passing, and dropped into her seat already thumbing through her phone. “You will not believe the night I had. Rhys had to duck out early for a call with Tokyo, midnight in Tokyo, can you imagine, that man never stops…”
She turned the screen around before anyone asked to see it. A photo: Rhys in a tux, his hand at the small of Beatrice’s back, both of them lit gold under some ballroom chandelier.
So that’s the famous Rhys Ashford. The man Beatrice couldn’t stop posting.
Rich. Handsome. Expensive.
Maybe her sister had finally picked one worth stealing.
Their mother made a soft, pleased sound. “He is so handsome, Beatrice. When is he going to make it official?”
“Soon.” Beatrice smiled like she already had the answer and had simply decided not to give it away yet. “He’s not a man who does anything halfway.”
“He was supposed to come tonight, actually.” Beatrice waved a hand like it was nothing. “Third time this month. Some deal in Singapore.”
Isla watched her sister talk about a man she hadn’t so much as mentioned seeing in weeks. Funny. Beatrice made lying look effortless.
Isla speared a piece of asparagus and said nothing. Silence cost her less than commentary, in this house. It always had.
“And how’s the…” their mother’s eyes flicked toward Isla, hunting for a word, the way she always did, as if the truth needed a softer name before it could sit at the table. “…the work going?”
“It’s a job, Mom. It pays.”
“I just worry.”
She didn’t. Worry required attention.
“It’s not exactly the kind of thing you put on a resume,” her mother added.
“I’m not trying to.”
Beatrice looked up from her phone for the first time all dinner, and there it was. The small, satisfied tilt of her mouth she used to wear in the hallways of their old high school, right before she said something that would leave a bruise and call it concern. “If you wanted, I could ask Rhys if his company’s hiring. Front desk, maybe. Somewhere with structure.”
“I’m good.”
“I’m just trying to help.”
Isla had heard that sentence before. She’d heard it the week after graduation, when Beatrice sat her down at their kitchen table, gentle as a knife, and explained that Mason had chosen her instead, that Isla should really try to be happy for them, because wasn’t that what family did. She still remembered the exact temperature of that kitchen. She remembered not crying until she was three blocks away, where no one could see her do it.
Eight years ago, she would have cried over Mason.
Now she just wondered whether Beatrice would cry over Rhys.
“Right,” Isla said. “Thanks.”
Dinner limped on the way it always did. Beatrice narrating her life in installments, their parents nodding along like a studio audience, Isla buttering bread and waiting for the acceptable moment to leave. She found it somewhere between the entrée and the coffee, mumbled something about a shift starting, and no one argued.
Her mother walked her to the door anyway, the way she always did, as if it made up for the rest of the evening.
“You could try harder with her,” her mother said quietly, hand already on the doorknob. “She only wants what’s best for you.”
“Sure,” Isla said, and let the door shut behind her before her mother could see her face do something it hadn’t done in years.
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The club smelled the way it always did this early. Bleach under perfume, ambition under glitter. Isla was three songs into her warm-up set when Denny, the floor manager, caught her wrist backstage and steered her toward the booking board.
“VIP room’s out tonight. Big spender. Wants a rotation, but he asked what time the redhead in the silver set was on.”
“He asked for me specifically?”
“Didn’t give a name. Just a time.” Denny was already walking away, clipboard under his arm. “Nine sharp. Don’t keep him waiting.”
Isla checked her reflection in the dim hallway mirror, adjusted a strap, fixed a smudge of gloss, and told herself it was just another night. Just another wallet with a face attached to it, the same as every other Friday.
At nine, she pushed through the curtain into the private room, chin up, already halfway into character.
The man in the corner booth looked up.
Isla’s whole body went still, because she knew that face. She’d seen it a hundred times, lit gold in a stranger’s phone across her mother’s dinner table.
The music kept playing.
He looked exactly like he did in Beatrice’s pictures. Sharp jaw. Black suit. Eyes that never seemed to rush anywhere.
Rhys Ashford.
Beatrice’s precious boyfriend.
A slow smile spread across Isla’s lips.
Well. This just got interesting.