The Call
## Chapter 4 — The Call
Ethan let the phone ring until Mia reached for the door handle.
That did it.
He answered.
His father’s voice came through thin and rough, not the iron bar Ethan remembered.
“Ethan.”
The car seemed to shrink around him.
“Dad.”
Mia looked out the window, but her whole body was listening.
There was a pause on the line. Machines beeped faintly in the background.
“I need you home.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
“You sent a car to a boutique.”
“I sent three. You got into one.”
“Why?”
“Because Maison Aurelle’s order triggered your old security protocol.”
“Their order was handbags.”
“Their order was a million-dollar bonded inventory transfer through our private luxury division. When your coin appeared on their floor, half the old system woke up.”
Mia’s fingers tightened on the scarf box.
Million-dollar.
Ethan heard the word land beside her.
His father coughed.
It was a terrible sound, wet and deep.
Ethan sat forward.
“What happened?”
“The doctors say months if I behave. Weeks if I remain myself.”
“Dad.”
“Don’t sound young. I don’t have time for that.”
There he was.
Weak, but still Warren.
Ethan looked at his own hand. The torn coin lay across his palm. His grandfather had carried it during the company’s first winter, when one truck and a warehouse full of unpaid invoices nearly broke the family. The split along the rim came from a loading hook. Warren had given it to Ethan at twenty-one and said, Carry what built you.
Ethan had tried to throw it in the river twice.
He never could.
Warren breathed through the line.
“The company is vulnerable. Malcolm is circling. The board is nervous. I need you to come home and take control before they turn this place into pieces.”
Ethan looked at Mia.
She was watching him now.
No anger in her face.
That came later, he knew.
Now she was counting losses.
“What if I say no?” Ethan asked.
His father’s answer was quiet.
“Then your uncle wins.”
The sedan turned north.
Mia spoke for the first time.
“Where are we going?”
Ethan covered the phone.
“My father’s house.”
Her laugh was small and sharp.
“Of course we are.”
He said into the phone, “She’s with me.”
“Who?”
“Mia.”
Another pause.
“The woman from the boutique.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened.
“The woman I love.”
Mia’s face changed.
Not soft enough to forgive him.
Not hard enough to deny she heard it.
Warren said, “Then bring her.”
The Calloway estate sat beyond iron gates in Lake Forest, close enough to the water that the air tasted faintly of it. The house was all limestone and glass, lit in gold from the inside, with old trees bending over the drive like they had been paid to keep secrets.
Mia stared through the window.
“No.”
Ethan looked at her.
“This is where you grew up?”
“Yes.”
“You told me you learned to ride a bike behind a laundromat.”
“I did. My nanny’s husband owned one.”
She closed her eyes.
He deserved that too.
The car stopped at the front steps.
A man in a dark coat opened Mia’s door before Ethan could. She recoiled slightly, then hated herself for it. Ethan saw both.
“I can take you home,” he said.
She looked at the house.
Then at him.
“Do you want me to go?”
“No.”
“Then stop offering me exits like you’re doing me a favor.”
He nodded once.
They climbed the steps together.
The click of Mia’s low heels on the stone sounded too small against the house.
At the top, someone waited beneath the portico light.
A woman in a cream wool coat, dark hair pinned low, diamond earrings bright enough to catch even the tired evening.
Vanessa Blaine smiled at Ethan as if two years were a delayed dinner reservation.
“Ethan,” she said.
Then her eyes moved to Mia, taking in the old coat, the white scarf box, the delivery jacket Ethan still wore.
Her smile stayed perfect.
May you like
“You came home.”
She'd been waiting on those steps for two years. And she wasn't going to make this easy for Mia.
