“Without the laptops.”
“No, around the laptops. I’m not wasting my time with food and conversation when I could be downloading data. My time is finite. I have an appoint at five for Helen to stick a few scalpels up my—”
“Don’t finish that sentence.” Her father frowned, raising his hand. “The less I know of that, the better.”
With a graceful turn, her father exited the suite.
The door closed behind him with an echoing snick.
Her palm vibrated in her pocket. Tristan had sent her another message, the fifth since breakfast. She sipped her hot chocolate and cycled through the messages one by one.
How did it go?
What happened?
Are you okay?
Do you need help?
Talk to me.
She had no idea how to reply to any of them. What could she write that he’d understand? She wasn’t even sure that she understood, and speaking with Tristan would only spin her head and make things worse.
Besides, he’d always hated the highborn. What would he say when he realized that she wouldn’t just be a highborn or an heir, but that she would soon be in the thick of highborn intrigue once more?
He’d try to talk her out of it.
And what would happen when he found out about the Closing Ball? They had never talked about monogamy, but he’d press it now. He’d demand it. She’d have to choose, and she couldn’t choose him.
She’d lose him the second she opened her mouth.
But for now, at least, while silence reigned between them, they still belonged to one another.
Everything’s fine, she typed out before shoving her palm in her pocket.
She had other things to think about. Tristan and his reaction would have to wait.
She rang downstairs for a bottle of Sangre de las Flores, her favorite wine, and turned back to her work.
Chapter 5
Lila reclined against the smooth leather seat in the back of the luxury sedan, trying to relax as a piano concerto pumped through the car’s speakers. A small rip in the seat kept scratching against her thigh, an annoyance even through her thick woolen trousers. Other things also annoyed her, like the odor of oil and industry that lingered in the gray carpet. Someone had tried to cover it with a liberal application of something overly chemical and overly floral, but she had trouble judging which smelled worse.
Lila rolled down the window halfway and pressed her forehead against the glass. Sergeant Norwood drove the car through New Bristol, crawling past the parks and lowborn businesses, both clustering around the grandeur of the highborn estates like poor, begging relations. Blackcoats patrolled around the edges of each compound, with only the cut of their coats, the shape of the coat of arms, and the piping on their uniforms betraying their family’s identity.
The militias waved off most of the traffic attempting to enter each compound as unsuitable or unwanted because the inhabitants did not have the proper paperwork. Few could slip inside a highborn compound, not unless they belonged to the family through blood, marriage, contract, or purchase. Only an appointment and grasping money—money ready to be spent on the businesses inside—might gain entry.
The clothes on the passersby never dipped in quality, all straining to match the highborn around them. At least, they didn’t until the sedan took a turn to the east, sliding past Wilson Tower, the skeletal backbone of a haunted family estate. Her mother now owned it. Lila now owned it. No one lived inside any longer, for Bullstow had removed the Wilson family, ferrying them to workborn housing throughout the city. Only a few Randolph appraisers and a detachment of militia tarried inside the stone walls.
The detour was no accident. Her mother had willed it, had wanted Lila to gaze upon the fallen giant.
Lila rolled the window all the way down, not caring if the workborn children in the area peeked into the sedan to glimpse her.
&nb
sp; She needed air.
It didn’t help that Sergeant Norwood drove much too quickly. The car hurtled through the streets, promising to arrive at Randolph General far too soon. She stifled a laugh at the idea of her appointment, at the idea of Elizabeth Randolph becoming the heir to Wolf Industries, and a mother. Both seemed equally comical in their ridiculousness, and she did not know which one she looked forward to the least. But she supposed anything trumped Elizabeth Randolph, the exile, or Elizabeth Randolph, the felon and soon-to-be-executed heir.