Isla Calloway sat motionless, her fingers gripping the edge of her desk as she struggled to process the impossible.
Her mother—Catherine Calloway—the woman she had grieved for her entire life, the woman whose death had shaped every decision she had ever made—
Might still be alive.
Lucas Reyes stood beside her, his presence steady, his green eyes locked onto Evelyn Maddox—the woman who had just dropped a bomb that could destroy everything.
"I’m saying she might be," Evelyn had told them.
Isla’s heartbeat pounded in her ears. "I need you to say it plainly," she said, her voice cold, precise, and sharpened by fear. "Are you telling me that my father and Lucas’s father faked my mother’s death?"
Evelyn hesitated. "I don’t know for certain. But what I do know is that your mother was a thre
