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Jess’s heart skipped a beat when she saw the text from Savannah: We need to talk about Simon. Call when you can.

She pushed back from the mahogany conference room table, drawing startled looks from the two men with her. She turned to the older of the two. “Sorry, James. I need to take a short break. Do you have an empty office I could use to make a call?”

James Hornbrook looked at her, his icy-blue eyes missing nothing. He nodded once. “Of course. The southeast conference room is empty. You can use that.”

She thanked him and walked down the hall to the room he’d indicated. Its floor-to-ceiling windows offered spectacular views of Manhattan. The familiar spire of the old Chrysler Building dominated the view to the east. The Empire State Building stood to the south, and One World Trade Center reached up above Lower Manhattan like a crystal needle. Her old Upper West Side condo and the Central Park paths where she used to push Simon in a stroller were to the north. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel them behind her. This used to be home.

She glanced over her shoulder toward the north wall of the conference room. One of James’s beloved cream-colored golden retrievers grinned at her from a large picture hung on the wall. She shut the door, but she didn’t assume her call would be private. Hornbrook Finance, LLC, was rumored to have hidden microphones and cameras in all of its conference rooms and offices, and she didn’t doubt it.

She dialed Savannah’s number and paced along one of the windows as the phone rang. Jess forced herself not to think about what might have prompted her sister’s text. If anything had happened to Simon . . .

Savannah finally answered. “Hi, Jess. Thanks for calling me so quickly. Hez is here too. I’ll put you on speaker.”

Jess’s blood pressure went up at the mention of Hez’s name. “What’s going on? Why do we need to talk about Simon?”

Savannah cleared her throat. “He heard Hez and me talking about the Justice Chamber, and he wants to join.”

“What? That’s out of the question, of course.”

“That’s exactly what we told him.”

Savannah sounded exasperated. “But he immediately got defiant and said no one was going to stop him from protecting you.”

Hez chimed in. “And we all remember what happened the last time he tried to do that on his own.”

Jess closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “I’d hoped he’d learned his lesson.”

Savannah’s voice softened. “Did you ever learn not to try to protect Mom?”

The memories cut like broken glass. Pierre flaunting a new affair in front of Mom, who knew she was trapped and could never leave him. Mom escaping into booze and pills. Jess urging her to fight back, then lashing out at Pierre when her mother couldn’t or wouldn’t. Pierre casually telling Mom to “control your bastard girl.”

Savannah trying to separate them before the confrontation turned physical.

Sometimes she succeeded, sometimes she didn’t. It happened over and over. And all the while, Mom spiraled further down. Jess had been helpless to stop it—but she wasn’t helpless now. She couldn’t save her mother, but she could make Pierre pay for his crimes. All of them.

Jess stared out over the cityscape without seeing it. “What do you suggest?”

“Let Simon help. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your headstrong ten-year-old closest of all.”

Hez laughed, but Jess winced. Savannah’s line was too close to the one she’d used about Hez. “That won’t work. He can’t help me analyze confidential financial data, and it wouldn’t be responsible to give him access to it anyway. Plus, I can’t take him out of school every time I need to make a trip to New York.”

And there was no way she would let James or his minions get anywhere near her son.

Hez’s deep voice came through the line. “I can find some jobs for him to do for the Justice Chamber. He can scan documents, organize files, pick up office supplies from the storeroom, and stuff like that. He’ll be involved, but he’ll also be safe—certainly safer than if we tell him no and he decides to freelance.”

He had a point, and Jess couldn’t think of a better alternative. She sighed. “Okay, fine.”

She ended the call and turned to go back into the meeting. She had done everything she could to keep Simon outside the blast radius of the bomb she was building, but he kept worming his way closer to ground zero. First, he managed to get himself expelled from his British boarding school and wound up in Nova Cambridge. Now he would be working with Hez at the Justice Chamber, which was the second most dangerous place he could be, regardless of what job Hez gave him.

The most dangerous place for Simon was with her, of course. She wanted that with all her heart—and had to fight against it with all her strength. They would be together when all of this was over. Until then, she had to keep him safe.

* * *

It felt like a family of bees had taken up residence in Savannah’s chest as she waited in her office for Jess, Hez, and her father to show up. Confrontation wasn’t her strong suit—not with anyone and certainly not with her arrogant and strong-willed father. She’d spent a lifetime kowtowing to his wishes and demands, and old habits were hard to break.

After a longing glance at the flowers blooming in the garden outside her window, she settled in her chair before lighting a pine-and-vanilla candle. The scent filled her lungs, and the tension knotting her shoulders eased. She might as well spend the next hour doing something useful. After logging in to her computer, she called up the proof she intended to show her father. How did she segue into the topic? The cowardly part of her wanted to let Hez start the conversation, but this was her job, not his. She needed to gather her courage and do what needed to be done.

A sharp rap sounded on her closed door, and it opened before she could call out. Her father strode through and shut the door behind him with a decisive click.

She straightened and gulped back the initial bolt of panic. “Dad, you’re early. Our meeting isn’t until ten.”

The library table that served as her desk didn’t feel substantial enough to protect her from the rage vibrating from her father’s fiery gaze.

He advanced toward her workspace. “I wanted to speak to you before anyone else shows up. One of Hez’s law students has been poking around the Extension School, and you need to put a stop to it. I hope you aren’t letting your sister manipulate you. Her vendetta against me is obvious—if she can’t find anything concrete to accuse me of, she’ll make up something.”

Savannah could have pointed out dozens of instances where he was at fault in the complicated family relationship, but she bit her tongue. Dad never admitted to wrongdoing, and in all her thirty-five years, she’d never once heard him apologize to anyone. “Jess isn’t involved in the investigation, Dad. Hez has been in charge of it, and he’s a man of the law. He’s not going to fabricate anything, and I see no reason to distrust the results of his investigation.”

“Well, you should have serious doubts. The rumor mill is in full swing, and I heard the leadership is considering some very counterproductive proposals. Is this true?”

“I’m not going to get into our decisions until our meeting.”

He placed both hands on the library table and glared down at her. “I did a huge favor for you, Savannah Elaine Legare.”

“It’s Webster.”

Wrong move. His glare intensified, and she had to force herself not to cower.

“It’s thanks to me you’re sitting in this office. If I hadn’t intervened after you were denied tenure, you’d be begging for another job far away from Ella. Are you going to stand back and let your own father be railroaded with false accusations? I thought better of you, Savannah. I’ve dedicated my entire life to education. Surely you remember all I’ve done for TGU.”

How dare he use Ella in this battle. She struggled to tamp down the rage bubbling in her chest. “I’m grateful to you and the TGU board for entrusting me with the future of our family’s heritage. But, Dad, it’s very vulnerable. Once I started looking at our situation, it was clear something is very wrong. We have to fix things before TGU ends up in bankruptcy. I know how much you love TGU.”

For what it can do for you. “I know you want me to do the right thing even if it’s personally painful to some of us.”

He rubbed the space between his eyebrows. “I trust you not to do anything we’ll both regret.”

His voice vibrated with unspoken emotion. He turned and stalked over to jerk open the door. The slam that followed knocked a book over on one of the bookcases.

Savannah rose to put Fahrenheit 451 back in place. She’d stood up to her dad for the first time in her life. It was something her mother had never done, and Savannah had followed that example for as long as she could remember. She let that fact sink in. It felt good—really good. Until the tone of his final words sank in. It felt like a threat. What exactly did he mean?