DARE'S POV
By the time I got home, my tie was already off, undone somewhere in the lift on the way up, and I still felt like I was wearing it. Ten hours of back-to-back calls trying to salvage what Camille and Elena had nearly torched in Spain, and none of it had managed to push Isla out of my head for longer than a few minutes at a time. I'd catch myself mid-sentence in a meeting, replaying the sound of her voice on that terrace — "I don't know what to do with you" — and lose the thread of whatever I was supposed to be negotiating.
I dropped onto the sofa without bothering to turn on more than one light, and my phone buzzed against the cushion beside me.
"Family dinner. 7pm. Your father expects you." — sent from the family group chat, in Marcus's clipped, dutiful phrasing, the way he a
