POV: Yessica | Location: Edinburgh
She answered on the second ring.
Not because she was ready. Because standing in the Edinburgh kitchen watching a phone ring while Pippa stared at her from across the counter was not a sustainable position.
"What did you send him?" Pippa said, in a whisper, exactly as Yessica pressed the phone to her ear.
She held up one finger.
"Yessica." Lewis's voice. Not a greeting. Just her name, the way he said it when something mattered — short, level, the version that didn't perform calm but was calm.
"Yes," she said.
A pause. "You said yes, it's worth knowing you."
"That's what I sent."
Another pause. Longer. She could hear him breathing — the specific quality of a man who had been sitting with a phone in his hand and was now recalibrating everything he h
