Page 67 of Iridescent
I take my seat and gesture for her to do the same. “Why are you here? What does my mother want?”
“I—” She balks, clearly not expecting me to go straight for the point. I do not have time for hesitation. It is nearly six, and I need to get home to my wife. I have already been away from her far too long.
“I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
She drops her gaze to her hands. A second later, tears slide down her cheeks.
For fuck’s sake.
I exhale slowly, locking down the irritation before it reaches my face. I slide the box of tissues across the desk.
“Stop crying, Isabel. I’ve had a shitty day, and none of it has anything to do with you.”
Her head lifts at once. Hope flickers in her tear-bright eyes, caught in the last of the evening light.
“Really?”
The change is abrupt enough to put me on alert. One second she is crying. The next, there is something almost buoyant in her voice.
Something about her had been off since her father’s funeral, but at the time, I couldn’t place it. I chalked it up to time. A decade is long enough to changea person and blur whatever certainty memory once had. Now I know better.
“Yes,” I say. “Now get to the point.”
Isabel sniffs and reaches for a tissue, blotting at her tears. “I’m sorry, Xavi. I told myself I wasn’t going to do this.”
The pause that follows is expectant.
I say nothing. I’m too drained to feel anything at this point.
She clears her throat. “After I dropped you off yesterday, your mother reached out.”
That does not surprise me. Only the cold, familiar certainty that whatever comes next will have my mother’s fingerprints all over it.
“Of course she did.”
Isabel reaches into her bag, pulls out a leather folder, and sets it on the desk between us. “The notaire handling Papá’s estate here met with us this morning.”
That, at least, explains why she came to the Riviera.
Eduardo ran one of the largest wineries in Europe. His principal vineyards were in Spain, but part of the business was here too—the Provençal estate that produced his French label, the Cap-Ferrat villa where he hosted buyers for private tastings, and the French holding company that held both. Enough of his empire sat on this side of the border to make a Riviera notaire unavoidable.
That still doesn’t explain why she’s here.
I look at the folder. “And?”
Her throat works before she answers. “He named you.”
My stare fixes on her. “For what?”
“As executor on this side of the estate,” she says quietly. “But not just that. Papá also left the holdings here in your hands until everything is settled. The notaire said he wanted someone he trusted to carry out his instructions.”
My brows draw together as I try to make sense of it.
Eduardo had said something like this once, years ago, in front of my parents. Something about leaving this side of the business to me if anything ever happened to him. At seventeen, I’d taken it for one of his grander jokes. Back then, I was still the stupid Navarro. The disappointing one. The son nobody expected much from.
Not once did I think he would actually do it.
The truth slots into place, and everything clicks with a clarity I fucking hate.
