Brooke cut in immediately. “This is disgusting. Don’t drag strangers into family business.”
I didn’t even look at her.
“Ava.”
Her eyes flicked to my mother, then Brooke, then back to me. That old instinct to protect the room, to avoid setting off something worse later, was all over her face. They had put that fear there.
“After… about three months,” she said quietly.
The room seemed to contract.
My mother let out a sharp, fake laugh. “That is such a lie.”
Ava flinched. Noah tightened his grip on her arm.
I turned to my mother at last. “You will not interrupt her again.”
Maybe it was my tone. Maybe it was the dust on my boots, the long flight still on my face, the fact that rage looks different when it has finally stopped pretending to be duty. Whatever it was, she actually went silent.
I looked back at Ava.
“Three months after I left?”
She nodded.
“At first,” she said, “your mother said she was only staying temporarily to help with the house and Noah. She said the place was too big for me alone. She said she’d handle the staff, the bills, the security. She took over the office first. Then the front suite. Then she said the master bedroom should stay formal for guests.”