“Sign the papers, Mom. I’ve already told them it’s a done deal. You’re too old and too out of touch to understand modern business anyway. You’re running the place into the ground with your outdated methods.”
I looked at the sleek corporate logo embossed on the documents. Then, I looked up at the boy I had carried in my body.
“No. The Hearthside is not for sale. Not to Apex, not to anyone.”
The strike came so fast my vision shattered into white sparks before my brain even registered the sting. It wasn’t a closed fist, but a sharp, vicious, open-handed slap that whipped my head violently to the side. The sheer force of it sent my reading glasses flying across the room, clattering against the hardwood.
Evelyn gasped loudly, but the sound was laced not with horror, but with a sick, breathless excitement. She had been waiting for him to break me.
Julian leaned close, his breath smelling heavily of expensive, twenty-year-old scotch and desperate adrenaline. “You’ll learn your place, old woman. You’ll sign it tomorrow, or I will have you declared mentally incompetent and take it anyway.”
I stayed perfectly still. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. My cheek throbbed with a fiery heat, but my heart turned instantly to absolute ice.
Not because I was broken. Not because I was defeated.
Because the tiny, motion-activated, high-definition security camera hidden inside the digital clock on the bookshelf—the exact camera Julian himself had insisted on installing three years ago to “keep an eye on the house while you’re alone”—was blinking a steady, recording red.
But the camera was only the beginning of my arsenal. I knew exactly what I had to do next, and it required the ruthless precision of a master baker. If Julian wanted a corporate takeover, he was about to get a devastating masterclass in hostile negotiations. And the opening volley would be served hot.
The brioche dough rose perfectly in the pre-dawn silence, swelling beautifully over the edges of the heavy ceramic bowls, golden, yeasty, and full of promise. Thick-cut, applewood-smoked bacon sizzled and snapped in the skillet, rendering its fat, while the rich, dark, earthy aroma of Ethiopian roast coffee filled the air, cutting through the tension.
I moved to the dining room and began to polish the good silver. These were the heavy, ornate heirloom pieces Thomas had bought me for our twenty-fifth anniversary. I hadn’t taken them out of their velvet-lined mahogany box since his funeral. I rubbed the silver polish in slow, methodical circles until I could see the cold reflection of my own bruised face in the knives.
I set four places at the long dining table.