every word.
“Why didn’t you tell me that woman was Gideon Calder’s daughter?”
Julian frowned.
“What’s Calder got to do with anything?”
Beatrice looked ready to collapse.
“Calder Capital.
The investment firm.”
Julian went perfectly still.
His company, Kestrel Medical Technologies, had been struggling for more than a year.
The business manufactured patient-monitoring devices and had attracted investors during its early growth, but rising costs and a delayed contract had left it dangerously short of operating cash.
Julian rarely explained the details to me.
He preferred to talk about the enormous success he expected after the company’s next financing round.
For three months, he had mentioned one firm repeatedly.
Calder Capital.
The firm whose participation might persuade other lenders to finance his company.
The firm founded by my father.
Gideon Calder.
I had been born Nora Pierce because my mother kept her own surname after divorcing my father.
Julian knew almost nothing about him.
He knew only that my parents separated when I was young and that my relationship with my father had become painfully complicated.
He had never asked for more.
I had never volunteered it.
My father was a wealthy man, but wealth had never been the reason I stayed away from him.
When I was nineteen, my mother became seriously ill.
My father arranged for excellent medical care and paid expenses without hesitation.
But during her final weeks, he was repeatedly away on business.
He missed conversations she desperately wanted to have with him.
And when she died, he wasn’t there.
I had waited for him in the hospital hallway until a nurse gently told me it was time to leave.
He arrived hours later.
He apologized.
I couldn’t forgive him.
Over time, our occasional conversations became arguments, and then there were no conversations at all.
He continued sending birthday cards.
I kept them in a shoebox without opening most of them.
At my maternity admission, when the receptionist asked for an emergency contact, I had surprised myself by writing his name.
Perhaps some part of me still wanted a father who would come when I called.
Twenty-seven minutes after Tessa contacted him, Gideon Calder arrived at St.
Catherine’s.
I saw him through the open doorway.
He wore a dark overcoat and an untucked white shirt.
His silver hair was damp from the rain outside.
He looked nothing like the carefully dressed businessman I remembered from magazine photographs.
He looked frightened.
He walked past Julian and Beatrice without acknowledging either of them.
Then he stopped beside my bed.
“Nora.”
For a moment, I was nineteen again, staring at the empty chair beside my mother’s hospital bed.
But this time he was standing in front of me.
“I came as soon as they called,” he said.
His eyes moved to Iris.
“Is that my granddaughter?”
I nodded.
“This is Iris.”
He reached toward her and stopped, waiting for permission.
I guided his hand to her blanket.
Her tiny fingers closed around one of his.
My father stared at her for several seconds.
Then he looked at me.
“What do you need?”
“Please help me keep her safe.”
“Of course.”
He didn’t promise to destroy Julian.
He didn’t announce that he owned half the city.
He simply pulled a chair beside the bed, sat down, and asked me to
