Rose: FYI. Whatever progress you made with Lily has been undone. You “have to talk” to her when you get here. She wants to “slow down.”

I shoved my phone into my pocket then dug around in my closet. I’d kept one of the envelopes Lily had sent me years ago. It had something in it, so I opened it. The locket glinted in the light on its delicate gold chain. I examined the lily of the valley embossed disk before carefully popping it open. I smiled at Lily’s toothless grin in the picture. We were age five and beaming at my mother as she told us to say cheese. The other side held a picture of us at prom. Rose had gagged and threatened to toss the camera at my head if we didn’t stop kissing in front of her.

I tucked it into my pocket. It was time to remind Lily of a few things. Time to prove that I was not giving her up this time.

It was barely seven in the morning when I pulled into my spot in front of my building. McCabe Contracting, was now the largest contracting company in the area. As a kid, I had rejected all my father’s attempts to get me interested in his work. He hadn’t really wanted me to take over his business. He had just wanted people to think that he did. Dad had been all about appearances. It was crazy that I was back here and running it now.

Liam’s car was already in the lot. I’d hired him to handle the business side of the company. Liam was a genius, he’d earned an MBA before he joined the Army. I had no desire to learn about accounting and payroll and cost analysis or anything like that, but he loved that shit. I focused on the clients, the designs, everything creative. The company had kind of floated along after my father’s death, relying on deals he’d had made before he died. His attorney, Jake Moretti, a friend of Violet’s, had hired a firm to manage it until I got back to decide what to do. At first, I was surprised that he left everything to me, but then I remembered his obsession with his reputation, and it made perfect sense. What would people think if I inherited nothing?

Truth was, he’d hated me and blamed me because my mother died. She died in a car crash on the way to pick up my eighth birthday cake in town. If I hadn’t been born, there would have been no need for a cake.

I keyed the code into the door and went inside. I crossed through the small lobby area to my office suite. I stuck my head into Liam’s office. “How’s your grandma?” Liam’s grandmother was like family to me. I used to join Liam whenever he visited her.