Chapter 3
By the time the castle comes into view, Isla MacLaren is operating on rage, caffeine, and stubborn refusal.
The drive from the airport has blurred into gray roads and mist and her mother’s relentless voice. Twelve hours of flying, three connections, one merciless overnight layover, and Alisa MacLaren has not stopped talking once, not to rest, not to think, not to breathe.
“He ruined everything,” Alisa says from the back seat of the hired car, her tone sharp and precise, as if she’s delivering a lecture instead of reliving a marriage. “Absolutely everything. Do you know how humiliating it was, being married to a man like that?”
Isla stares out the window, jaw tight, watching stone fences slide past in the fog.
“You’ve told me,” Isla says quietly.
“And now,” Alisa continues, unfazed, “after all these years, he dies and leaves us with this mess. Typical. Absolutely typical.”
Isla closes her eyes.
She knows the story. She has always known the story. Her mother has told it with variations, depending on the mood and the audience.
Keir MacLaren: the brilliant musician. The addict. The cheater. The man who chose drugs and groupies and chaos over responsibility. The man who abandoned his wife and infant daughter and disappeared into fame.
Isla had grown up with that version of him, polished sharp and repeated until it felt like fact carved in stone.
And yet—
Even bad people can do some good.
The thought irritates her, but it won’t leave.
Keir never sent birthday cards. Never showed up. Never called. Never asked to hear her play. Isla has never seen his face in real life, never heard his voice without a screen between them.
But the money came. Every month. Without fail.
The best teachers. The best instruments. The best schools. The travel. The competitions.
Luxury.
Comfort.
Opportunity.
Her childhood was not one of struggle. It was one of pressure, expectation, and polish.
That money made her life possible.
And now Alisa is already counting it again.
“I just want to know what he left,” Alisa says. “After everything, he owes us that much.”
Isla opens her eyes, anger flaring sharp and sudden. “He’s dead.”
Alisa waves a hand. “And?”
The word lands wrong.
Isla turns, finally meeting her mother’s gaze in the reflection of the window. Alisa’s face is tight with exhaustion and resentment, and something else Isla doesn’t want to name: anticipation.
“He’s been dead less than forty-eight hours,” Isla says. “Could you not—”
“Not what?” Alisa snaps. “Be practical? We need to know where we stand.”
Where we stand.
As if grief is a financial position.
Isla looks away again, heat crawling up her neck. “You’re not even curious about him.”
Alisa scoffs. “I know everything I need to know.”
That, Isla realizes, is the problem.
The castle emerges out of the mist like something half-forgotten, half-dared into existence. Gray stone rises from the land, ancient and imposing, ivy crawling along its walls as if trying to reclaim it inch by inch.
It’s not romantic in the way Isla expected.
It’s heavier.
Older.
A crowd of expectant paparazzi stands waiting in front of the gate. The flashes go off as the car waits for the gate to open. Every newspaper she’d seen in the airport had the headlines that Keir MacLaren was dead.
Never to sing again or play his guitar or even the keyboard he kept on stage. Never to get the chance to know his daughter.
The limo pulls into the gravel drive, tires crunching loudly in the silence. Isla steps out, stiff and sore, jet lag pressing behind her eyes like a bruise.
Cold air hits her in the face, and she breathes in the Scottish air.
This is where he lived.
This is where he chose to be.
The thought stings more than she expects.
“Hello,” a lady in a white uniform says. “Follow me.”
Quickly, the maid ushers them into the castle.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. Ma’am, you’ll be in the east wing. Your mother right across the hall from you. Tea will be served at four p.m. The butler will bring up your luggage. My name is Matilda. If you need anything at all, don’t hesitate to ring me.”
She leads them up the stairs to their bedrooms.
Inside, the castle is dim and cool, the air smelling faintly of stone, wood smoke, and something masculine, leather, perhaps. Isla’s footsteps echo too loudly on the floor, her heels sounding foreign and intrusive.
A sense of feeling out of place creeps over her. Her father’s house.
“Mr. Bell would like to speak to you whenever you’re ready. He’s in Mr. Keir’s study on the first floor.”
The maid disappears, and Isla sinks onto her bed. She glances around the room, a feeling of despair fills her. Why is this the first time she’s ever been in her father’s house?
She has to get out of here.
Opening the door, she hurries back downstairs, her exhaustion momentarily forgotten. A feeling of foreboding sends her fleeing.
Downstairs, she sees her mother walking into the study. Sigh. Of course, she goes straight to the study. She wants to know what they will inherit.
The solicitor greets them, polite, careful, already measuring, and ushers Alisa into conversation. Isla drifts away, uninterested in legal logistics and wills and estates she never asked for.
But not her mother. She’s all about the inheritance, and that irks Isla.
She needs space. A place to escape from the despair and hopelessness filling her. In a cruel twist of fate, she will never know her father.
She wanders down a corridor, then another, the castle unfolding in quiet wings and turns. Portraits line the walls, stern faces, judgmental eyes. She wonders briefly if Keir ever felt watched here.
A door stands ajar at the end of a hallway.
Isla pushes it open without thinking.
She assumes it’s staff space. Storage. A back corridor she shouldn’t be in. All she was looking for was a place to escape this massive building. A door to the outside.
Instead, she collides with a solid body.
“Oof—!”
She stumbles forward, hands coming up instinctively, palms landing on a man’s chest.
A very warm, very solid chest. The smell of woodsmoke and something alluring teases her nose. A ripple shudders through her body.
Strong hands grip her arms, steadying her before she can fall. Isla jerks back, breath sharp, heart slamming into her ribs.
“What the hell?” she snaps.
The man in front of her is tall. Broad-shouldered. Dressed in an emerald kilt that has all the regalia. His socks come to his knees, his tartan crosses his chest. His hair is dark and slightly too long, his jaw rough with stubble.
He does not look like staff.
He looks like trouble.
“You walked into me,” he says flatly.
Isla bristles. “You were standing in the middle of a hallway.”
“Because it’s my hallway.”
She blinks. “Excuse me?”
His gaze flicks over her, expensive jacket, designer heels, posture sharpened by years of being watched, and something hardens in his eyes.
“Oh,” he says. “You must be her.”
Her temper flares instantly. “Her who?”
“The ghost,” he says coolly. “The absentee daughter.”
The words hit like a glass of ice water.
Isla straightens. “And he was an absentee father,” she snaps, because, apparently, this is what they’re doing now, throwing assumptions like knives.
“I don’t believe you,” he replies.
Her mouth falls open. “What did you just say?”
He folds his arms. “You show up late. Only when he’s dead. Wander where you don’t belong. Act like everyone should move out of your way.”
Isla laughs, sharp and incredulous. “And you are…what? A groupie? A friend who never left?”
His jaw tightens. “Careful.”
“Why?” Isla shoots back. “I assume you’re one of his, what do you call yourselves, proteges? Fans? People who benefit from orbiting him?”
“That’s rich,” he says, eyes darkening. “Coming from someone who benefited without ever showing up.”
Her pulse spikes.
“I didn’t abandon him,” Isla snaps. “He abandoned me.”
His gaze flickers. Something like pain flashes there before hardening into anger.
“You think that makes you special?” he says quietly. “You think you’re the only one he didn’t show up for?”
Isla takes a step closer, fueled by exhaustion and grief and twelve hours of listening to her mother tear a man apart. “You don’t get to judge me. After all, I never spoke to him.”
“And you don’t get to waltz in here like this place is a hotel suite you forgot you booked,” he fires back.
They’re standing too close now.
Isla smells him, soap, leather, something warm and human. Awareness sparks low in her stomach, unwelcome and confusing.
She hates that her body notices.
She hates that his eyes linger a second too long.
“Who are you?” she demands.
He hesitates.
Just a fraction.
“Someone who actually knew him,” he says.
The words sting more than any insult.
Isla swallows. “You knew a version of him.”
His mouth curves into something bitter. “And you knew nothing.”
“Oh, you are so right,” she says.
Footsteps sound behind them.
“Isla!”
Alisa’s voice cuts through the tension like a blade. Isla turns, relief and irritation tangling together.
“There you are,” Alisa says, sweeping toward them. Her eyes flick over the man with quick assessment. “And who is this?”
Callum stiffens.
Isla answers before he can. “Apparently, someone who thinks I don’t belong here.”
Alisa’s lips thin. “We are Keir MacLaren’s family.”
The man’s gaze sharpens. “That’s debatable.”
Alisa bristles. “Excuse me?”
He looks directly at Isla’s mother now, and Isla sees something in his expression, contained grief, tightly leashed fury.
“He raised me,” the man says. “He chose me. He loved me, and I loved him.”
Alisa scoffs. “That doesn’t make you family.”
Callum’s hands curl into fists at his sides. “Funny. He never chose you.”
The silence that follows is electric.
Isla feels caught between them, heart pounding, emotions flaring in every direction at once.
“This conversation is over,” Alisa snaps. “We didn’t come here to be insulted by—”
“By someone who stayed?” Callum interrupts. “Someone who showed up when it mattered?”
Isla steps forward without thinking. “Stop.”
They both look at her.
“I didn’t ask for this,” Isla says, voice tight. “I didn’t ask to be born. I didn’t ask to be ignored. And I didn’t ask to be dragged halfway across the world to stand in his house while strangers tell me who he was.”
Callum studies her then, really studies her, and for the first time, his anger wavers.
For a split second, Isla sees something else in his eyes.
Recognition.
Then it’s gone.
“Welcome to the club,” he says coolly. “The Keir MacLaren family club.”
Alisa exhales sharply. “We’ll be speaking with the solicitor now.”
She grips Isla’s arm and pulls her away.
Isla doesn’t look back.
She feels him watching her.
Her pulse refuses to settle.
Her anger burns bright and messy and unresolved.
Her first impression of whoever the hell he is, is catastrophic.
And the worst part?
Somewhere beneath the fury and grief and exhaustion, Isla is painfully aware of one thing she does not want to examine.
This man, this stranger who loved her father, matters.
And that complicates everything.