Chapter 6 - The Uninvited GuestThe studio behind the Westport cottage was cluttered with half-finished canvases of stormy seas, jars of dried lavender, and the sweet, chaotic mess of three children’s watercolor sets.
Nathaniel sat cross-legged on the scarred wooden floor, trying—and failing miserably—to construct a origami frog under the intense, unforgiving supervision of Miles.
"Your fold is crooked," Miles observed critically, poking the soggy green paper with a stubby finger. "If you build bridges like this, cars will fall in the river."
"I'll work on my fine motor skills," Nathaniel murmured, brushing a lock of dark hair out of his eyes. He looked over at Elena, who was standing by the easel, mixing titanium white and burnt sienna on a porcelain palette. The afternoon sun was cutting through the dusty skylight, turning the stray strands of her chestnut hair into spun gold.
Before Elena could answer, a sharp, rhythmic tapping echoed from the front of the cottage.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It wasn't the tentative knock of a neighbor or the cheerful ring of a delivery driver. It was the deliberate, imperious summons of someone accustomed to doors opening instantly.
Nathaniel went completely still. He stood up, dusting off his trousers. "Stay here."
"Who is it?" Elena asked, laying down her brush, her shoulders instantly tightening.
"There's only one person in Manhattan who knocks like she's auditing God," Nathaniel said grimly, walking out of the studio and down the wooden deck toward the main cottage.
He pulled open the front screen door.
Celeste Cross stood on the porch. She was wearing a tailored Chanel trench coat that looked absurdly out of place against the weathered cedar shingles and the oversized red tricycle. Her driver waited by the idling town car at the end of the lane, staring intently at the dashboard.
"You look ridiculous," Celeste said, her eyes sweeping over Nathaniel's rolled-up sleeves and mud-spattered boots. "Playing suburban martyr in a drafty shack with a woman who wouldn't pass muster as a pantry maid in our country club."
"The board accepted your resignation, Mother," Nathaniel said, blocking the doorway entirely. "And my security detail has standing orders to escort you off the property if you take another step forward."
Celeste didn't flinch. She stepped forward anyway, forcing Nathaniel to hold his ground or physically push her. She reached into her leather handbag, pulled out a heavy, cream-colored envelope embossed with gold leaf, and dropped it onto the porch table beside a plastic dinosaur.
"Vivien’s father isn't pressing criminal charges for the subsidiary audit," Celeste said, her voice dropping into a cold, transactional register. "Out of respect for your father’s memory. But the Lockwood board has frozen our commercial real estate credit lines for the third quarter. Unless you sign these proxy releases by midnight, Cross Holdings will default on its municipal bonds in London by Tuesday morning."
Nathaniel looked at the envelope without touching it. "Let it default."
Celeste’s eyes narrowed. "You built that company from the ground up after your father died. You traded your youth, your sleep, and your happiness for those glass towers. You are throwing away a multi-billion-dollar dynasty for a woman who painted greeting cards?"
"I didn't throw anything away, Mother," Nathaniel said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "I finally stopped paying rent on a prison you built for me."
From behind him, the screen door clicked open. Elena stepped out onto the porch, her hands clean of paint, wearing a simple cotton cardigan. She didn't look small next to Celeste. She looked impossibly tall.
"Mrs. Cross," Elena said, her voice steady as a plumb line. "You forgot your paperwork."
She picked up the gold-embossed envelope with two fingers, as if it were contaminated, and dropped it neatly into the open basket of the red tricycle beside them.
May you like
Celeste stared at Elena with a look of pure, unadulterated venom. "You think you’ve won something here, girl. But men like Nathaniel are built for empires, not sandcastles. In six months, when the money runs out and the novelty of muddy boots wears off, he’ll come crawling back to his own kind."
"Maybe," Elena said softly. "But he’ll do it with his eyes open."
