Sebastian
I found Clara in the garden again, exactly where I always found her when something had broken open inside her that she wasn't ready to name directly, sitting beneath the magnolia tree with her knees drawn up, staring at nothing.
"He's pulling back," she said, before I'd even fully settled onto the bench beside her. "Ethan. After everything at the gala, after the library, he's reassigning the Ashford oversight to someone else. Publicly distancing himself because the board's threatening to remove him."
"I heard," I admitted. "William mentioned it to me directly, actually. He's concerned about the optics too, given how much scrutiny the restructuring is already under."
"Everyone's concerned about optics," Clara said, bitterness threading through her voice. "Meanwhile nobody seem
