Chapter 3 A Word

Isla POV

The meeting was finally over.

I gathered my things quickly, keeping my head down, hoping that Lucian Vale had already moved on to something more important than me.

He hadn't.

"My office, Ms. Montclair."

Of course.

---

His office was exactly what it always was: large, white, immaculate, the kind of space that made you feel like your problems were small and your mistakes were enormous.

I stood in front of his desk with my folder pressed against my chest and waited while he opened my file and read through it with a blank expression that gave nothing away.

Then his eyes came up and met mine.

Hard. Cold. Unreadable.

"M-my apologies, Sir," I said. The words came out smaller than I intended.

"I didn't ask for an apology." His voice was flat and final. "An apology won't fix this."

I knew that. I knew that and I still said it because six years of making myself small had apparently become muscle memory.

He turned another page. Set the file down.

"You have one week to rewrite this completely," he said. "I expect no excuses about missed errors. I expect it done correctly."

He slid the document across the desk toward me.

I reached for it. "Th-thank you, Sir-"

"Ms. Montclair."

I stopped.

He was looking at me with that careful, controlled expression, the one I still didn't have a name for. The one that had been sitting on his face all day in ways I couldn't explain.

"You are a smart and capable woman," he said. "Your work history makes that clear. But your timidness-" he paused, choosing the word deliberately, "-needs addressing. In this industry, being too trusting is not a virtue. You need to watch your back."

I stared at him.

My work history. He had looked at my work history. He had read it carefully enough to have an opinion about it.

And this cold, dissatisfied man who had never once in three years said anything to me that wasn't a criticism had just called me smart and capable and then warned me to watch my back.

I didn't understand him. I had never understood him. But the flash of the hotel room came-the blood on my hand, Vivienne's satisfied smile, Ronan's cold stare.

I do need to watch my back.

"Yes, Sir," I said.

And I left before he could say anything else that I didn't know how to process.

----

It was nearing 6pm and I was still at my desk.

Most of the office had emptied out but a few of us remained, heads down and working. I hadn't taken a lunch break. There was no one to take it with. Vivienne had disappeared hours ago with her usual crowd and I had eaten at my desk the way I always did and told myself it was fine.

I glanced across the floor.

Vivienne was in the far room, perched on someone's desk, laughing at something, completely at ease. A small group of people around her, drawn in without deciding to be, the way people always were with her.

I watched her for a moment.

She had always been like this. School. Home. Now here. Every room she entered she owned within minutes and she accepted it like it was simply the natural order of things.

And then there was me.

No friends. No orbit. Just my desk and my work and a quiet I had gotten so used to I had stopped noticing it.

Was this her doing? The thought arrived quietly. Or am I just like this?

I turned back to my screen and caught my reflection in the dark border of the monitor.

I touched my ponytail without thinking and felt something loosen quietly in my chest.

My hair.

I had missed it more than I realized. Ronan had made me cut it. But here it was - long, blonde, mine.

I almost smiled.

Then a stack of papers dropped onto my desk so hard I flinched.

Gerald Marsh stood over me.

Department lead. Second in command of my department.

The kind of man who had been in an office long enough to believe the office belonged to him: grey haired, heavy shouldered, with the specific contempt of someone who had never once been told no by anyone beneath him.

He had made my professional life a misery for as long as I had worked here. Extra work dumped on my desk without explanation. Credit taken without acknowledgment. Opportunities that dissolved before they ever reached me.

I had never understood why.

In this life I intended to find out.

"How stupid can you be?" Not quietly. The few people still at their desks went very still. "You think you can embarrass me like that? Presenting that nonsense in front of the CEO?"

My jaw tightened "I-"

"The CEO and company directors were in that room." He leaned forward. "And you made me a laughingstock. What exactly is the point of vouching for you if you can't even catch your own mistakes?"

I dropped my gaze, face hot. Nobody intervened. Nobody even looked up.

Was I really that invisible? Or were they just that used to this?

His hand came down hard on the stack of papers. "This needs to be done by tomorrow morning. All of it."

I looked at the pile.

It wasn't my work. It was never my work. Gerald had been handing me assignments above my grade for years - taking the credit at galas and presentations while I sat at my desk and produced the thing he would smile over.

In my first life I had taken it every single time.

"I can't, Mr. Marsh," I said. "Mr. Vale has already assigned me a full rewrite of my report within the week. I don't have the capacity for additional work on top of that."

The floor went completely still.

Gerald stared at me.

I had never pushed back. Not once. I watched the realization move across his face and then something uglier settle behind it.

He opened his mouth.

"Gerald!"

Vivienne's voice. Warm. Bright. Cutting across the floor like she owned it.

I noticed it then - she was the only person in this office who called him by his first name. Not Mr. Marsh. Gerald. Like they were equals. Like they were something.

Looking back at it now it wasn't professional at all.

Her hand landed briefly on his arm and she glanced between the pile of work and me and for just a fraction of a second I saw it. Surprise. At my defiance.

She covered it instantly.

"Oh Vivienne you're going to help him with his work!" she announced brightly, gesturing toward me with a little laugh, her short dark hair bouncing. "How nice of you! I'm sure he'll appreciate it!"

"I am not," I said simply.

Vivienne blinked. Gerald drew breath.

She spoke before he could.

"Come on Isla it's not even that hard." Her voice stayed light, almost amused. She nudged my arm. "Just sorting through files. You could do it in your sleep."

"If it's that easy," I said, turning back to my screen, "then you do it."

Silence.

Then whispers. The specific charged murmur of an office that had just witnessed something it hadn't expected.

I heard Gerald mutter something under his breath. I didn't catch the words but I caught the tone.

I didn't care.

It was Vivienne that made me nervous.

She was still standing there. She hadn't left. And her expression changed into something soft and wounded, her voice dropping into the register she used when she wanted a room on her side.

"I'm sorry Isla." Gentle. Patient. The picture of a younger sister trying very hard. "I know Mr. Vale was really hard on you today. You don't have to take it out on everyone else though."

She paused, letting it land. "I was only trying to help."

The room shifted.

I felt it, the way eyes moved, the way the energy changed.

Vivienne standing there looking gracious and understanding while I sat with my jaw tight and my spine straight and my very existence apparently reading as hostile.

"She's so mature," someone murmured.

"Honestly I can't believe she's the younger sister."

And then, quieter, from somewhere I couldn't pinpoint:

"Isla's adopted anyway, remember."

I flinched. Just slightly. Just enough that I felt it even if nobody saw it.

Vivienne heard it too. She didn't correct it. She just smiled softly and gestured for Gerald to follow her. He went, smoothed and redirected, the confrontation dissolved before it could finish.

Finally I took a deep breath going back to work.

Minutes passed and she came back alone and sat on the edge of my desk like nothing had happened.

"Hey." she said, gently. "I know today was a lot."

I didn't answer.

A flicker of something crossed her face at my silence. She pushed through it.

"I called Ronan," she said, brightening. "I thought it might help - getting out, a nice dinner, the three of us. He's meeting us at Marcello's at eight."

She smiled. "What do you think?"

She had called my fiancé behind my back and made plans for my evening.

And she was sitting on my desk waiting for me to be grateful.

"Sure," I said. And smiled.

The smile cost me something.

She squealed softly, squeezed my shoulder, and left.

I turned back to my screen.

In this life, I would take my revenge.

Not just on her.

But on every single person who had looked at me and decided I was nothing.