Category:

I'm busy responding to comments—close to a hundred in the space of five minutes—when Aseem returns.

"Did you close?" Papa asks him before he's even sat down.

"Not yet. Malhotra's being difficult about the earn-out period," Aseem says, carefully lowering the plastic tray with our hot drinks onto the table. He slides the second tray, stacked high with croissants and fruit pots, across the table before squeezing in next to me. He picks out Mama's breakfast—yogurt and some fruit—and places it in front of her before helping himself to a banana. "But I've straightened him out. We should have the paperwork tomorrow."

Papa nods. "We need to get this done. Keep checking in."

"I will," Aseem says between bites. "I'm handling it, Papa."

I reach for a croissant. I know as soon as I've had my first bite that I'm not going to be able to stomach the whole thing. I set it down on a plate and take a tentative sip of the orange juice instead as the conversation pivots back to Aisha.

I try not to dwell on how much the last-minute flights—first class, of course—would have cost while Aseem fills his parents in. Aisha will arrive at Glasgow airport tomorrow to find a chauffeur waiting for her at arrivals, ready to escort her to the port at Mallaig, from where she will be picked up and brought to the island. You'd think Aisha is a helpless teenager, not a twenty-seven-year-old "adventure-seeker" as she likes to call herself. I am half-expecting Papa to ask Aseem to stay back at Fort William so he can go and pick Aisha up himself, but he just sighs and turns back to his paper.

I glance up as an announcement crackles over the speaker and people start trickling out of the dining car. I gulp down the remainder of my juice and slide out of the seat.

Ten minutes to arrival.

This trip is meant to be a celebration. A family gathering to mark Papa's retirement and Mama and Papa's fortieth wedding anniversary. But the truth is we're all here for one thing and one thing only: the biggest piece of the pie. After the sale of PetroVision goes through, the family trust will be worth over three hundred million pounds. Up until now, Papa's been the sole trustee, doling out money to Aseem, Myra, and Aisha based on their needs and his whims. But thanks to a tax strategy that I can't quite wrap my head around, the terms of the trust are being amended to change it from a discretionary trust that Papa controls to a specific trust within which the shares of each of his three children will be fixed.

That's the real reason we've all dropped everything to be here. It's payday. I push my shoulders back. Like Aisha, I'm not a fan of family gatherings, and if there is one thing that's more complicated than being on a family holiday, it's being on a family holiday on a Scottish island with no one to talk to except your in-laws and three hundred million pounds hanging in the balance.

But unlike Aisha, I don't have the luxury of bailing out. At least not yet. I need to make this trip work.

My entire future depends on it.

CHAPTER TWO

MYRA

I squint as I carry the flowers into the kitchen, blinded by the unexpected winter sun pouring in through the picture window. I set the vase down on the dining table and rearrange the flowers one final time—freshly picked hydrangeas, lilies, and roses bristle against hawthorns and long tendrils of grass in a vintage crystal vase—the effect is spectacular, at once luxurious and rustic, much like the estate itself.

I pick out a few stray leaves from the vase and drop them in the bin, glancing briefly at the stack of unpaid bills on the kitchen counter. I shove the papers in a drawer for later, trying to ignore the words FINAL REMINDER and skim through my to-do list instead.

I cross off flowers and move from room to room, plumping cushions, straightening pictures, rearranging bookshelves, until every corner of the house looks perfect. Effortless.

I allow myself a brief moment by the living room window when I am done. The sunlight streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows is casting the room in a warm glow that, deceptive as it is, is wonderfully refreshing after months of gray skies and relentless rain. Beyond the glass, the icy waters of the loch glitter and sparkle in the midmorning sun.

I still find it incredible that I live here.