REBECCA’S POV
Taylor called at half past ten.
I was at my desk in the study with Olivia’s documents spread in front of me, the business mapping she had produced, the structural analysis of Edmund’s primary holding, the dependency chart that showed, with the clean inevitability of a well-drawn diagram, exactly where pressure traveled when applied at the right point. I had been sitting with these documents for two hours, moving through them with the focused attention I was developing into something close to fluency, and I had reached the stage of the morning where the information had stopped being abstract and had started being actionable.
My phone buzzed. The name on the screen stopped me mid-thought.
Taylor.
I stared at it for a moment. Taylor, who had told me in the garden three we
