The colors aligned, shifted, realigned. Eighteen seconds. Three off my average.
I looked at her badge photo on the screen. Dark curls. Brown eyes. That mouth.
I closed the file and wiped down the cube.
This just couldn't be happening.
The following Thursday, dinner at the family home in Coral Gables. A tradition I showed up to because refusing meant dealing with far too many questions and explanations afterward.
The house was old money, inherited from my grandfather on my mother’s side, a British architect named Ellis Ashworth who married an American art dealer and built a home that couldn’t decide if it was a Georgian manor or a Miami estate. It was both, somehow, and it worked.
Grandfather Ellis was the reason I’d spent years in London as a boy, living with my grandparents after what happened. I’d arrived at eight years old, terrified of everything, and he’d taught me how to hold a teacup, solve a Rubik’s cube, and pronounce"schedule" properly. His accent stuck to me like a second skin, layered over American vowels until neither country could fully claim me. Some things you pick up as a child and never put down.
My father, Richard Hunter, sat at the head of the table. Semi-retired from Hunter Interactive, still sharp, still capable of dismantling a bad argument in three sentences. My mother, Catherine, sat across from him, her wine glass held in hands that shook if you looked closely enough. She kept them in her lap between sips. She thought nobody noticed.
Everyone noticed. Nobody said anything.
"You look thin," she said to me the way she always did.
"I’m the same weight I was last month, Mom."
"You’re not eating enough."
"I eat plenty."
"Catherine, the boy runs a company," my father said. "He eats fine."
"He doesn’t eat fine. I can see his collarbone from here."
I buttoned my shirt one notch higher. Miles snorted into his water glass.
And then there was Mona.
My sister arrived twenty minutes late, which was early for her, in designer trainers and a silk blouse and an energy that made the dining room feel three sizes smaller. Twenty-seven years old. Took her inheritance, ignored every piece of financial advice my father ever gave her, and opened a nightclub in South Beach calledReverie.
"Grand opening is this weekend," she announced, dropping into her chair and stealing a bread roll from Miles’s plate. "You’re both coming."
"I’ll be there," Miles offered.
Everyone looked at me.
"No." I didn’t even hesitate.
"I wasn’t asking," Mona replied. "I was informing you."
"A nightclub. Packed bodies. Bass vibrating through every surface. Drinks spilled on floors that hundreds of people have walked on." I picked up my fork. "No."
"VIP is upstairs, private, limited access. Thirty people max. I had the whole section sanitized twice this week."
"You sanitized a nightclub?"
"I sanitized YOUR section of a nightclub. Because I love you. And because I knew you’d be insufferable about it."
"Still no," I said flatly.
Mona grinned. Her eyes were gleaming like she was already three steps ahead of me—she'd been planning this for weeks and I'd just walked into the trap.
"Beaumont," she said.
