CHAPTER 005
1528 Words
꧁ Callista
༺༺༒༻༻
[Two Years Later]
Home was still the same.
That was the first thought that moved through my mind as the car pulled up to the gate and the house came into full view — large and familiar and completely, stubbornly unchanged, like the last two years had simply decided not to touch it.
I had spent two years becoming someone entirely different. The house had not bothered.
I climbed out, instructed the driver on my bags, and walked through the front door.
They were all there.
Of course they were.
Edmund in his armchair, Petra on the sofa with her legs crossed, Isolde beside her scrolling through her phone.
Three heads turned at once and the performance began immediately — smiles stretching, voices warming, the whole elaborate theater of a family that remembered how to look like one when the situation called for it.
"Callista!" Petra clasped her hands together like she was genuinely delighted. "Oh my darling, you have been gone far too long. We were so worried — two whole years with barely a word—"
"You can cut the act," I said.
The smiles faltered slightly.
"All of you." I looked at each of them in turn, unhurried, my voice completely level. "I am not here for pleasantries and I am certainly not here to pretend. Save the energy."
I turned toward the hallway and raised my voice slightly for the housekeeper.
"Clara." She appeared from the kitchen doorway, eyes wide. "Please prepare my corner
room and keep my luggage safe. I'll be back within the hour."
I picked up my bag and walked back out without waiting for anyone to respond.
The cemetery was quiet in the late afternoon, the kind of quiet that settles over a place like a held breath. I had bought white flowers from the vendor at the gate without even thinking about it — some things the body remembers on its own.
I walked the familiar path and when I reached her headstone I stood there for a moment before slowly sinking to my knees, the grass cool and damp beneath me.
My eyes were already blurring.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I'm sorry it took me two years to come back. I needed — I had things I had to do first. Things I had to become first. I couldn't come back until I was ready and I needed you to understand that."
I reached out and touched the stone.
"You always loved my art. Do you remember how you used to sit beside me when I painted and just watch? You never told me what to paint or how to do it better — you just sat there like what I was making was already the most beautiful thing you had ever seen." My throat tightened. "I got the scholarship, Mama. I studied under the best and I worked harder than I have ever worked in my life and I am building something real. Something that is entirely mine. Something no one can take from me."
I exhaled shakily.
"I know what happened to you now. I know everything. And I need you to know that I am not going to let it go. I am not going to swallow it and move on and pretend that what they did was anything less than what it was." I pressed my palm flat against the headstone. "I am going to fight for you. I am going to take back everything they stole from you — every company, every asset, every single thing you built that they have been living off of while your name collected dust on a headstone. I promise you that, Mama. I will take it all back. And they will pay for what they did to you. Every single one of them."
I stayed there until the light started to shift. Then I wiped my face, straightened my back, and stood up.
I had somewhere to be.
༺༺༒༻༻
The convention hall was already full by the time I arrived, humming with the particular energy of a room packed with people who were important and knew it. Crystal glasses caught the chandelier light, conversations layered over each other in a low sophisticated roar, and the art on the walls — pieces sourced from collections across the world — looked down over all of it with the quiet authority of things that had outlasted every room they had ever been in.
I moved through the crowd unhurried, exchanging greetings, pausing where I needed to. I was the special guest tonight. I had been back in the country for less than six hours and already the evening was unfolding exactly the way I had known it would.
I heard my name.
I turned.
Stellan was standing a few feet away, Isolde's hand tucked through the crook of his arm, both of them looking at me with the careful assessment of people trying to decide how to play something. He looked the same.
"Well," Stellan said, and there was something in his tone — the faintest edge of condescension dressed up as pleasantry. "I heard you were back. You look—" he paused, letting the pause do its work, "—okay."
"Thank you," I said pleasantly.
He tilted his head. "I have to ask though — what exactly brings someone like you to an event like this?" He glanced around the room with a small smile. "This is a fairly serious crowd, Callista. Not really the sort of thing I'd expect to find you at." He met my eyes again. "What have you even been doing with yourself these past two years? Finding your feet somewhere? Or did you find someone to help you get there? A generous benefactor of some kind?"
I looked at him for a moment.
"Go to hell, Stellan," I said, still pleasantly.
Isolde stepped forward before he could respond, her chin lifting with the particular confidence of someone about to show off.
"We're not here to argue actually," she said breezily. "We're here because Stellan is buying me a piece tonight." She glanced toward the featured wall with the satisfied air of someone who had already decided. "A. Dawn's work, actually. Have you heard of her?" She looked back at me with barely concealed delight. "She is one of the most exciting artists in the world right now — and she is the special guest tonight. I have been dying to meet her. The talent is just extraordinary."
I kept my expression perfectly composed.
Fools.
"Lovely," I said. "I hope you enjoy your evening." I smiled at them both and turned away before either of them could pull me back into it. "I'm not here to gossip or argue. Have a wonderful night."
I had barely taken three steps when the gentle tap of a glass rang through the hall and the conversations around me softened and stilled.
The host stepped up to the microphone at the front of the room, beaming.
"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us this evening for our annual convention. It is always an extraordinary gathering and tonight is no exception." He paused for effect, clasping his hands. "It is my very great honor to introduce our special guest — a woman who has taken the art world completely by storm over the past two years. She speaks with her brushstrokes in a way that very few artists in a generation manage to do. You know her work. You have followed her rise. Ladies and gentlemen — A. Dawn. Known to those fortunate enough to know her personally as Ms. Callista Ashford."
The spotlight found me.
The room erupted.
I smiled and raised my hand in a small wave as the applause rolled through the hall, warm and genuine and enormously satisfying.
I caught them from the corner of my eye.
Isolde, her mouth fallen open, her champagne glass hovering forgotten halfway to her lips. Stellan, completely motionless, staring at me with wide eyes like the floor had just shifted under his feet.
She is A. Dawn?
I could practically see the question forming on both their faces, could practically watch the pieces crashing into each other in real time.
I was still smiling.
Before either of them could close their mouths long enough to say anything, I heard footsteps approaching from behind them — confident, unhurried — and then a voice that cut cleanly through the noise of the room.
"Callista."
They turned. And froze.
He was already moving past them like they were part of the furniture, his eyes fixed on me, a slow easy smile on his face — Caden Morrow. The youngest billionaire in the country. The kind of man that a room rearranged itself around without meaning to.
He reached me and took both my hands in his, the warmth of it easy and familiar.
"You have no idea how difficult it is to get a hold of you," he said, his voice dropping just slightly, like the rest of the room had become optional. "Now." His smile widened. "How about that dance you owe me?"
- Writer
