Chapter 233:

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As evening approached, we began the drive back to Manhattan. Worn out from the day’s activities, Daisy fell asleep on my shoulder in the back seat. Cyrus drove with quiet focus while we talked about everything from venture capital to data analytics to parenting. We discovered we had a great deal in common.

The mood was light and pleasant, and I almost forgot about the pain in my foot and the troubles waiting for me back in New York.

“Next time,” Cyrus said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror, “once your foot has healed, how about we take Daisy back to the park to fly kites again?”

I smiled. “I’d like that.”

Just then, my phone rang. It was Zara. Assuming it was another one of her gossip-filled calls, I answered casually.

“Corinne!” Zara’s voice was sharp and frantic, filled with shock and anger. “You have to see the news! Something huge just happened!”

My heart dropped, and a cold sense of foreboding washed over me. “What is it?”

Cyrus glanced at me in the rearview mirror, noticing the change in my expression, and slowed the car.

On the other end of the line, Zara took a deep breath, her voice trembling. “Blake… Blake Carlisle just bought the Nixon family a sixty-million-dollar estate up in the Catskills.”

I stared straight ahead, my hand steady on the phone. Sixty million dollars. I felt no shock, no anger, only a cold, analytical recognition. He had bought a house the way he bought everything else: to quiet a problem, to purchase a narrative, to close a chapter he didn’t want to write himself.

I looked down at the phone in my hand. “Zara, I’ll call you back.”

J𝗈і𝗻 𝗼𝘂𝗋 𝘤𝗈𝘮𝗺uո𝗶t𝘺 𝘰𝘯 𝗀𝗮l𝗻𝗼𝘷е𝗅𝘀.сom

I hung up and sat in silence for a moment. Cyrus pulled over to the side of the road. “Corinne? What happened?”

I met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Blake just bought the Nixon family a house. For sixty million dollars.”

Cyrus was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “I’m sorry, Corinne.”

I shook my head slowly. “No. This isn’t something to be sorry about. It’s just data. And data is something I know how to read.”

We resumed the drive in quiet understanding as the lights of Manhattan grew closer on the horizon. I gazed out the window, watching the highway lights blur past, and let the silence settle around me without feeling the need to fill it.

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