: Ella
Vanessa called two days later, her voice thin and unsteady over the phone in a way I hadn't heard from her before, not even in the raw moments over lunch when her guilt had briefly surfaced.
"I need to see you," she said. "Alone. Not Kylian, not lunch with an audience. Just us."
I hesitated, thinking of Renata's warnings, of Marcus's insistence on a full protective detail, of every careful precaution built into the last month specifically to prevent exactly this kind of unplanned, unmonitored meeting.
"Is everything all right?"
"No." Her voice cracked slightly. "I don't think it has been for a long time. Please, Isabella. I don't have anyone else I trust enough to ask."
I told Kylian everything the moment I hung up, and watched him weigh the same risk I'd already been turning
