As Fate Would Have It

The Call I Was Not Ready For.

If you had told me four years ago that I'd build an empire out of spreadsheets and spite, I would have laughed in your face — right before I had security escort you off my father's property.

That was the old me. Spoiled. Untouchable. Cruel without even trying.

I like to think I've killed her off completely.

I was wrong about a lot of things back then. That one, I'm still working on.

My phone buzzed against the desk, screen-down, the way it always did when it had bad news to deliver and knew better than to show its face first. I let it sit there a second longer than I needed to. Whatever it was, it could wait one more breath. I'd learned that much, at least — not everything urgent deserves to be treated like an emergency.

Then it buzzed again. Twice, fast, impatient. Not an email. A call.

I flipped it over.

*Odette Thorne.*

My stomach didn't drop so much as it went very, very still — the way a room goes still right before someone throws the first punch.

Odette never called. Odette texted in clipped, businesslike sentences with the warmth of a courtroom subpoena, because that was Odette's love language and everyone at Thorne knew better than to expect more. A call from her at 6:51 p.m. on a Thursday wasn't a courtesy.

It was a verdict.

I let it ring twice more before I picked up, because some habits from my old life were actually worth keeping — never let anyone hear you flinch.

"Odette." I kept my voice smooth, unbothered, the exact tone I used to use on gossip columnists who thought they'd caught me in something. "This is unexpected."

"Is it?" Her voice was clipped even tighter than usual, which for Odette was saying something. "Funny. I was about to say the same thing to *Faye.*"

There it was.

Not my name. My *other* name — the one with four years and one entire identity built carefully around it, the one nobody in this city was supposed to be able to attach to the other one.

I didn't answer right away. Four years ago, the old me would have panicked out loud, would have made the mistake of filling silence with an explanation nobody asked for yet. I'd learned better than that too.

"I don't know what you mean," I said instead, and I could even hear how thin it sounded.

Odette laughed — short, humorless, the sound of someone who already knew she'd won and was only calling to watch me lose in real time. "Randall Mason's daughter," she said, "moonlighting as my brother's illustrator, while quietly feeding numbers to his biggest competitor. Should I keep going, or do you want to tell me it's not true, just so I can enjoy watching you try?"

The rain had picked up outside my window. I hadn't noticed until just now, how loud it had gotten, how the whole city outside had turned to static.

"Where did you get that," I said. Not a question. A demand and not a very steady one.

"Does it matter?" A pause, and when she spoke again, something in her tone shifted — less triumphant, more like she was handing me a loaded weapon and daring me to see if I'd use it on myself. "Julian doesn't know yet. I wanted to give you the chance to be the one who tells him. Consider it professional courtesy, Fate."

She hung up before I could answer. Before I could even decide what answer I would have given.

I sat there with the phone still pressed to my ear, listening to a dial tone that felt louder than anything Odette had actually said, and for one long second I was twenty-three again — standing in my father's study, delivering an ultimatum I hadn't been sure I had the nerve to follow through on.

*Let me go with your blessing, or I'll go without it.*

I had built four years of a life on that sentence. A name. A job I'd earned with my own hands instead of my father's. A man who had looked at me like I was someone worth choosing — not because of who my family was, but because of who I'd decided to become when nobody was watching.

And in the span of one phone call, all of it had just become a countdown.

My phone buzzed a third time. Not Odette.

*Julian.*

I stared at his name on the screen until it blurred, my thumb hovering over the green circle like it might bite me, and somewhere underneath the panic I registered, very clearly, that I had maybe ninety seconds to decide something I should have decided four years ago.

Answer, and lie one more time.

Or answer, and finally tell him exactly who he'd fallen for.

The phone kept ringing.

I picked it up.

"Fate," Julian said, before I could get a single word out, and something about the way he said it — flat, careful, entirely unlike him — told me I was already too late to choose either option.

"I need you to explain something to me," he said. "And I need you to do it right now."

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*Four Years Earlier*