Chapter 4

We held a small memorial for her in the garden. It wasn' t a funeral, because my father, as next of kin, refused to release her body from the coroner' s office. He was "coordinating a more appropriate, private service" at a "later date," according to his secretary.

So my grandmother, my uncle Ethan, and I did what we could. Ethan brought a large, framed photograph of my mother from her university office. It was a picture I' d never seen before. She was standing in front of a whiteboard filled with complex equations, a huge, genuine smile on her face, her eyes sparkling with intelligence and joy. That was her. That was the woman I knew.

We placed the photo on a small table under her favorite weeping willow tree. We surrounded it with candles and white roses, her favorite flower. We stood there for hours as the sun began to set, the silence broken only by the chirping of crickets and my grandmother' s quiet weeping.

My father didn' t call. He didn' t send a message. The first day passed. The second day passed. The memorial' s candles burned down and were replaced. The roses began to wilt. His absence was a physical presence, a black hole in the center of our grief. He was not just absent, he was actively staying away.

On the third day, my uncle Ethan couldn't take it anymore. His face was a grim, tight mask of anger.

"I' m going to his office," he announced. "I' m not leaving until I get an answer."

My grandmother nodded, her eyes red-rimmed. "Find out where my son is, Ethan. Find out why he is doing this to his family. To Eleanor."

I watched him go, a knot of anxiety tightening in my stomach. An hour later, he called me. His voice was strange, strained.

"Ava? Are you sitting down?"

"What is it, Uncle Ethan? What' s wrong?"

"I' m at the Sterling Dynamics headquarters. I asked to see Richard. His secretary told me he' s out of the country."

"Out of the country?" I repeated, confused. "The merger... he told me he had a merger."

"There is no merger, Ava," Ethan said, his voice dangerously low. "I have a friend on the board of the company he was supposedly merging with. I called him. There were never any talks. It was a lie."

"Then where is he?"

There was a long pause. I could hear Ethan take a deep, shaky breath.

"His secretary... she' s a young girl, she looked terrified. I think she felt sorry for me. She told me to check the company' s internal social media feed. It' s for employees only, a way to boost morale."

"And?" I prompted, my heart starting to pound.

"And there are pictures, Ava. They were posted an hour ago." His voice broke. "He' s in the Maldives. He' s on a yacht. He' s with Charlotte Hayes."

The world tilted on its axis. The Maldives. A tropical paradise. While we were lighting candles for my dead mother, he was on a yacht.

"There' s more," Ethan said, his voice hardening into something sharp and brittle. "The post was from Charlotte. The caption reads: 'Celebrating our new beginning. A future built on truth and love.' "

Underneath the text was a photo. My father and Charlotte, tanned and smiling. He had his arm around her, and her hand was on her stomach. She was wearing a white bikini, and her pregnancy was no longer subtle. It was obvious, a deliberate statement to the world.

A wave of nausea washed over me. I dropped the phone, my hand suddenly too weak to hold it. I stumbled out to the garden, to the memorial under the willow tree. I looked at the picture of my mother, at her brilliant, happy face, and then I thought of that other picture, the one of them on the yacht.

My grandmother found me there, my body wracked with silent, heaving sobs. She wrapped her arms around me, holding me tight.

"He told me," she whispered into my hair, her own voice choked with tears and shame. "Ethan told me everything." She pulled back, her hands on my shoulders, and looked into my eyes. Her face was etched with a grief so profound it seemed to have aged her ten years in three days. "What he has done... what my son has become... there are no words. I am so sorry, Ava. I am so ashamed. I failed Eleanor. I failed you."

I couldn' t speak. I just leaned into her, the shared grief our only anchor in the storm.

After a long time, I pulled away. I wiped my tears with the back of my hand and looked at my mother' s photograph. The anger was back, but it was different now. It wasn' t hot and chaotic anymore. It was cold, clear, and focused.

He had taken everything from me. My mother, my home, my childhood. He thought he had won. He was celebrating on a yacht, building a new life on the ashes of our old one.

"I' m going to finish her work," I said, my voice quiet but steady. I looked at my uncle, who had returned and was standing by the door, his face pale. "The AI ethics framework she was developing. I' m going to make sure the world knows her name. Not as Richard Sterling' s tragic wife, but as Dr. Eleanor Vance, the genius who changed the world."

My uncle Ethan nodded slowly, a spark of resolve in his own eyes. "And we are going to make him pay for what he did to her."

My father had started a war. He just didn't know we were going to fight back.