The Tutor of Two Rivals

Chapter 7: The Call Home

Nobody moved for a second that felt like it stretched into a full minute.

"He said what," Ezra said finally, voice flat with disbelief.

"You heard me." Julian's thumb was still hovering over his phone screen, like he half expected the message to change if he looked at it again. "He said it's urgent, he said it's about your dad, and then he said Mira's mother's name like he already knew we'd be standing in this exact room when he called." He looked up, and whatever careful ease he usually wore had completely drained out of his face. "He's never done that before. Not once. My dad doesn't rush. He plans everything three moves ahead. For him to call like this means something actually happened tonight, not something that happened seventeen years ago."

Mira's pulse hammered against her ribs. "Happened tonight. You mean just now. While we were in here."

"I don't know what I mean." Julian ran a hand through his hair, and for the first time since she'd met him, Mira saw something underneath the charm that looked almost like fear. "I just know I need to go. Now."

"I'm coming with you," Mira said, before she'd fully decided to say it.

Both boys turned to look at her.

"That's not a good idea," Ezra said slowly. "If something's actually wrong between our fathers, the last thing you want is to walk into the middle of it."

"My mother's name just came up twice in one night in a house I'd never set foot in before this week," Mira said, voice sharper than she meant it, though she didn't try to soften it. "I think I've already walked into the middle of it, Ezra. I just didn't know it yet."

Something in his expression shifted, reluctant agreement warring with worry, and he glanced at Julian like he was looking for backup that didn't come.

"She's right," Julian said quietly. "She deserves to hear whatever this is as much as either of us does. Maybe more."

Ezra exhaled hard through his nose, the sound of a boy who'd spent his whole life being the one who made decisions and hated not being the one making this one. "Fine. But I'm coming too. If my father's involved in whatever's happening tonight, I want to hear it directly, not secondhand from Marcus Voss's version of events."

"That's going to go over great," Julian muttered. "Showing up at my house unannounced with a Cole in tow."

"You invited her. I'm inviting myself. Deal with it."

They left in Julian's car, the three of them crammed into a silence that felt louder than any argument could have been, streetlights sliding past the windows in long yellow streaks while Mira's mind spun through every version of what could possibly be urgent enough to pull a boy out of a tutoring session at nine at night.

The Voss house, when they pulled up, looked nothing like Cole Manor. Where the Coles' home was glass and sharp angles and silence, the Voss house was warm lights and wide windows, the kind of place that looked, from the outside, like somewhere people actually lived. Mira had a half second to register that contrast before Julian was already out of the car, moving fast up the front steps, and she and Ezra hurried to keep up.

Inside, raised voices carried from somewhere down the hall before they'd even gotten the door closed behind them, Marcus Voss's voice, tight and urgent, and another voice underneath it that made Mira stop dead in the entryway.

Her mother's voice.

"Elena." Julian froze too, staring down the hall like he couldn't quite process what he was hearing. "That's. Is that."

Mira didn't wait to answer him. She was already moving, half running down the hallway toward the sound of her mother's voice in a house she'd never once been inside, heart slamming against her ribs so hard it hurt, every version of the theory Julian had handed her two days ago crashing together into something that suddenly, terrifyingly, felt like it might actually be true.

She pushed open the door to find her mother standing in the middle of Marcus Voss's study, coat still on like she'd arrived in a hurry and hadn't thought to take it off, face pale and tight in a way Mira had only seen once before, the week her father left.

Elena's eyes found her daughter's face across the room, and something in her expression cracked wide open, grief and fear and something that looked almost like relief all at once.

"Mira," she said, voice shaking. "You weren't supposed to be here for this. Not yet. Not like this."

"Mom." Mira's own voice came out smaller than she wanted it to. "What's going on. Why are you here. Why does it sound like you and Mr. Voss already know each other."

Elena's gaze flicked to Marcus, standing stiff and pale by the window, and then to Adrian Cole, who Mira hadn't even registered was standing in the far corner of the room until that exact second, arms crossed, jaw tight, looking like a man bracing for something he'd been dreading for seventeen years.

"Because we do," Elena said quietly. "All three of us. Longer than you've been alive."

The room went completely silent, every single person in it holding their breath, and Mira felt the floor tilt slightly under her feet, the way it had in the library an hour ago, except this time there was no door swinging open to interrupt it, no excuse to look away.

"Someone needs to tell me the truth right now," Mira said, voice shaking but steady enough to carry across the room. "All of it. Not pieces. Not half answers. I want to know what happened between the three of you, and I want to know why it's taken my entire life for anyone to think I deserved to hear it."

For a long moment, nobody spoke.

Then Marcus Voss opened his mouth, drew in a slow breath like a man finally setting down something he'd carried too long, and said five words that changed the shape of everything Mira thought she knew.

"Your mother was my fiancée."