“Go get a DNA test, Michael. Or are you too scared of what the swab will say?” I ended the call.

The war had started, and I was thousands of miles away, untouchable.

Over the next two weeks my life in San Diego bloomed. The resort project cleared its final environmental reviews. James took me to a cliffside restaurant in La Jolla to celebrate, and over a bottle of Cabernet we didn’t talk about work.

We talked about our childhoods, our failures, our dreams. He looked at me not as a broken woman to be saved, but as an equal who’d survived a war.

When he reached across the table and rested his hand over mine, I didn’t flinch. It was warm, grounding, and free of any angle.

But the peace didn’t last the night. The next morning Pam sent a video.