Chapter 4

Isolde's POV

That night, I didn't check into a hotel. I went to my mother, Evelyn Voss.

She lived on the top floor of the building that housed Voss Logistics. She'd never seen the point of a commute. When she opened the door, she looked at the backpack sagging off my shoulder, then at my face. She didn't say a word. She just stepped aside to let me in.

My mother had built Voss Logistics from a single leased warehouse into the biggest independent freight company at the port. She ran it the way she did everything: hands-on, unsentimental, and allergic to excuses. When I insisted on marrying Kieran, she fought me hard, and we stopped speaking. On my wedding day, she sent me one text.

Never marry a man who needs you to shrink so he can feel big. You'll spend your whole life apologizing for your own strength.

Every word had come true.

For seven years after that, we didn't say a single word to each other. Then, four days ago, I dialed a number I never thought I'd dial again.

"Mom." It was the first time I'd called her that in seven years. "I need money. Caspian's gone. I need to buy him a grave."

The line went silent for so long that I thought she might hang up, or tell me she'd told me so. She asked only two things: how much, and what account.

Ten minutes later, the money was there.

Now she poured me a glass of warm water and sat across from me, waiting for my hands to stop shaking. After a long time, she spoke. She didn't ask about Kieran or the divorce.

"Who did he look like?"

That was when it hit me. She had never met her grandson.

I handed her my phone. On the screen, Caspian sat in the sand at the beach, holding up a sandy little shovel and grinning at the camera with two front teeth. My mother looked at it for a long time. When the screen went dark, she tapped it awake again.

"Like you, when you were little."

It was the first time since it happened that I cried out loud. She didn't hug me, and she didn't say anything comforting. She just pushed the box of tissues toward me and stayed in her chair until I was done.

When my breathing evened out, her voice went back to its usual dryness.

"You didn't come here so someone would tell you it's going to be okay."

"No."

"Good." She slid a thick binder across the table: South Harbor Terminal: Operations Review.

"Containers are missing. We're paying ghost vendors. Port funds are hemorrhaging into shell companies, and nobody down there can explain it. It's loud, the hours are brutal, and half the crew will lie to your face. You want to pay me back? Start at the bottom. Entry-level ops. And don't expect favors because of your last name."

I stared at the binder. She raised an eyebrow. "What? Seven years in a beach house made you soft?"

I forced something resembling a smile. "I'm in."

"Shower and get some sleep. Six a.m. downstairs," she stepped back into CEO mode. "The port doesn't stop just because your marriage did."

A week later, my days were reduced to hauling a canvas tote between the container yards and customs. I smelled permanently of diesel, paper dust, and cheap coffee. The work was punishing with zero margin for error. It was the absolute opposite of my gilded cage, and the first thing in years that felt real.

Early on, Kieran loved showing off my brain. At parties, he’d brag that I could read a P&L sheet better than his executives. But after Liora entered the picture, my instincts suddenly had labels: too emotional, impractical, not the Hale way. Piece by piece, Isolde Voss was stripped down until nothing remained but Kieran Hale’s wife—a woman who needed permission just to breathe.

But the muscle memory was still there. I could spot a split invoice designed to dodge approval limits. I could untangle nested wire transfers and catch discrepancies in a fake vendor's paperwork at a glance. I knew when a yard boss was stalling and when a clerk was terrified.

Nights were another story. I still snapped awake at 3:10 a.m.—the exact minute Caspian stopped breathing. Sleep was impossible after that, so I’d turn on the lamp and scrub through the day’s manifests until sunrise.

Slowly, the woman I used to be was clawing her way back.

It paid off. One afternoon, I tracked a string of missing cargo through three shell entities directly to an abandoned warehouse. Hearing my report, the shift lead closed the binder and gave me a long look.

"When I heard the boss's kid was coming down, I figured it was a babysitting gig," he grunted. "Gave you a week tops. Turns out you actually know your shit."

I wiped the grease off my hands, a real smile breaking through. "I kind of forgot that myself."

After shift that evening, a few of us sat on overturned pallets outside the field office, eating cheap takeout under the glare of forklift headlights. Someone told a terrible joke. The crew cracked up, and for the first time since losing Caspian, a genuine laugh dragged itself out of my chest.

Then a voice sliced through the diesel and the laughter—light, breezy, and entirely out of place.

"Well. Isn't this a surprise."