Page 91 of Road to Redemption

“Mm. It won't matter once we take Isaac down anyway – level the scales or whatever.” I shrugged, trying to comfort myself. There was a part of me that hated not being able to be there, to help Spencer if she got flustered. But this was her fight and the rest of us would just have to be here for her in the aftermath.

Clearing her throat, Leo squeezed my feet. “Thank you for talking Spence into doing this.”

A rare ding came to my phone, forcing my eyes to the screen.

Mom.

Biting my lip, I tried to look away but couldn’t peel my eyes off the screen. “Yeah, for sure.”

She’d been texting more, with increasingly intense determination to see me. Every message was vague, platitudes about needing to talk and not wanting to be distant. But never any real information.

Leo went on, “I just know I’m not the best at talking with her about this stuff. And I appreciate that you’ve helped her navigate it so much.”

When I didn’t respond, Leo leaned closer and put her hands on my arms. “Hey, you okay?”

I closed my phone and tossed it into the folds of the couch. “Yeah, sorry.”

All it took was one eyebrow raise from Leo for me to confess. “It’s my mom, she’s back to pestering me.”

“Need me to call her back?” Leo smirked, an annoyance in her eyes for the broken boundaries my mother was all too comfortable to cross.

Shaking my head, I looked away. It was too hard to tell Leo what I was really thinking when I looked into her gorgeous eyes. “I’m just starting to wonder…”

“Princess…”

I let out a groan. “No, I’m serious. Maybe I should see her.”

“You should or you want to?”

It was a fair distinction. But the more my mom texted, the more convinced I became that she might actually know something.

Balking at the idea of wanting to see her, I shook my head. “God, no. I don’t want to. I just wonder if she might know something that could help us.”

“How could she know anything useful that we couldn’t find ourselves?” Leo tilted her head. Clearly, she wanted to find out what I was really thinking.

I bit my lip. “She’s obviously in touch with at least Gabe since she was at the press conference, which means she has at least spoken to Isaac. And Gabe is so tied to Zeus that I’d be shocked if Isaac hadn’t gotten his grip around Maura.”

Before Leo could try to dissuade me, I kept going, “He might have told her something, knowing that she’s desperate for more money. We know they have a history, it wouldn’t be crazy for them to have stayed in touch.”

Our visit to Vivienne had reminded me just how close our families were. We’d spent almost all of our childhoods together. If Dom and I managed to find each other again, it wouldn’t be all that insane to imagine that Maura and Isaac still had a connection.

“That’s a fair point.” Considering it, Leo sucked her teeth.

I grabbed her forearms and squeezed them. “What if my mother has information about the IPO and when Isaac plans to take Zeus public? I’d never forgive myself if there was something I could have done.”

Shaking her head, Leo found it all implausible. “It’s just so unlikely.”

“She’s been saying that she needs to talk to me, that it’s really important. What if it’s the IPO?”

Leo pulled me in, moving my hips toward her. “Kiera, you know I adore you. But all of this… it’s just not like Isaac to have loose lips. Your mom wouldn’t even know that the IPO was important to you.”

True. As far as Maura was concerned, Brennan’s shares dissolved upon his death and he hadn’t even considered how we would feed ourselves. A part of me thought she must have hated him for it, that all of her pursuit of wealth was really just anger for the way my father chose to leave.

Or at least the way she thought he left.

“It’s far more likely that your mom is just trying to draw you out, to manipulate you like she always does.” Sadness passed over her eyes as she held me close. “You know I hate saying it. I just know how much she likes having the power over you.”

I wanted to fight her on it, to keep pushing. But the slamming of the front door and the heavy footsteps of my most dangerous captor drew my eyes instead.