Chapter 5
The party is wrong.
That is Isla MacLaren’s first coherent thought as she steps into the long gallery of the castle and takes in the soft light, the circulating trays of champagne, the low murmur of conversation that hums with an energy entirely too alive for the day they’ve just endured.
Grief, apparently, has an expiration date. Right after the funeral. In the background, her father’s music is softly playing.
She pauses just inside the doorway, spine straight, hands loosely clasped in front of her, as if posture alone can keep her emotions from spilling out.
The echo of the chapel still rings in her ears, the brutal quiet after her song, the way the silence had pressed down like a held breath, like the world itself had stopped to listen.
She had expected outrage.
She had expected tears.
She had not expected the murmured approval that followed her down the aisle afterward. The whispered brave, finally, someone said it, offered by strangers who believed her pain belonged to them now.
She hadn’t done it for them.
She had done it because she refused to lie. She refused to grieve for a man she’d never known.
And standing here now, watching people toast her father’s life as though it were a successful album launch instead of a complicated wreckage, Isla feels something sharp and dangerous unfurl in her chest.
Pride.
She didn’t fake grief.
She hadn’t bowed her head and played the dutiful daughter. She hadn’t softened herself to preserve a myth. She hadn’t swallowed the truth to make other people comfortable.
Whatever comes next, she will not regret playing at his funeral.
“Smile,” her mother murmurs beside her. “People are watching.”
Isla doesn’t turn. “Let them. What is there to be smiling about?”
Alisa MacLaren exhales sharply. “This is not the time to be difficult.”
It’s never the time. All her life, her mother just wanted her to obediently be the daughter she trained. The musician who was a concert pianist and not a rock star like her father.
Standing beside her mother, she scans the room instead.
The gallery stretches the length of the castle, ancient stone walls lined with portraits of people who look like they never asked permission to exist. Chandeliers cast a warm glow over polished floors.
Servers move gracefully through clusters of mourners, offering champagne and delicate food no one seems to be eating.
Celebrities lean against centuries-old stone, grief tailored and elegant. Musicians gather in small knots, trading stories that sound suspiciously rehearsed. Industry people network even now, their sorrow compartmentalized and efficient.
Isla feels like a wrong note in a carefully rehearsed performance.
Softly, she slips away from her mother and drifts toward a tall window overlooking the green grass below. Outside, the fog has lifted just enough to reveal dark grass and bare trees, the land stretching outward like something ancient and watchful.
Her reflection stares back at her in the glass.
Composed. Controlled. Immaculate.
Inside, she feels emotionally raw.
“You did that on purpose.”
The voice comes from behind her, low, controlled, threaded with fury held on a tight leash.
Isla closes her eyes briefly.
Of course, he followed her.
She turns slowly.
The man from earlier stands a few feet away, posture rigid, dark hair still damp from the mist outside. He’s shed his coat and rolled his sleeves as if holding himself together has already cost him too much. Once again, he’s wearing a kilt, which is ridiculously good-looking on him.
Up close, the awareness hits her again, unwanted and unwelcome. He is solid in a way that feels earned. Real. Not polished like the men circulating the room.
“What exactly did I do on purpose?” Isla asks coolly, knowing he’s referring to her song at the funeral.
“You turned his funeral into a spectacle,” he says. “Congratulations.”
Her temper snaps to life. “It already was one.”
“At least it was his spectacle and not yours.”
“How?” she fires back. “Because they were glorifying him and making him into some perfect human being?”
His eyes flash. “Because they were mourning.”
“I hardly call that mourning. It was more pretentious. Besides, do you think I care?”
He lets out a short, disbelieving laugh. “You humiliated him?”
By telling the truth, she thinks, but she doesn’t say it yet.
“Do you have any idea what you set off in there?” he continues, stepping closer. “The press is already tearing it apart. You didn’t just speak for yourself, you turned his absence into a public verdict.”
“I didn’t make his absence a public verdict,” Isla snaps. “He did. All I wanted was for people to be honest about him.”
His gaze searches her face, as if he’s looking for something to grab onto. “Honest would’ve been waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” she demands. “For someone to give me permission to exist in the story of my own father? I’ve waited twenty-four years. How much longer do I need to wait?”
Silence crackled between them.
She feels eyes on them, glances quickly averted, conversations lowering in pitch. Their tension has weight. Gravity. And people are beginning to notice.
“Not here,” he says tightly. “If you’re going to do this, don’t do it in front of an audience. You’ve already done that once today.”
Isla’s mouth curves into something sharp. “Funny. That didn’t seem to bother you when the audience was worshipping him.”
His jaw flexes. “Come on.”
She should refuse.
She doesn’t, because it feels good to get out this brewing anger.
They move down a side corridor into a smaller sitting room that smells faintly of leather and old books. The door closes behind them with a soft, final click.
The silence is immediate.
He turns to face her, anger coiled beneath restraint. “You don’t get to rewrite his life because you’re angry.”
Isla laughs, short and incredulous. “Rewrite? I barely wrote a footnote.”
“You stood up in front of hundreds of people and reduced him to his worst failure.”
“And you’ve been doing the opposite,” she fires back. “Turning him into a saint.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No?” Isla steps closer, exhaustion stripping away her caution. “Then tell me, where was he on my tenth birthday? Or my fifteenth? Or the day I won my first international competition?”
He doesn’t answer.
She presses on, voice sharpening. “Where was he when I was practicing six hours a day? When I was throwing up from nerves before performances? When I was crying alone in hotel rooms because my mother was too busy managing my career to notice I wanted my father?”
“He sent money,” he says quietly.
The words are cold and mocking.
Isla stiffens. “Money. Oh yeah, that’s right, money eases a child’s pain when other kids have fathers and know that she doesn’t. Money gives them a hug and tells them to sleep well tonight.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“That’s exactly what you meant,” she says. “Because that’s the version of him you’re defending. The one who thought wiring money absolved him of everything else.”
His jaw tightens. “You don’t know him.”
The words cut deeper than she expected.
“You’re right,” Isla says sharply. “I don’t. And that’s my point.”
She takes a breath. “So who are you, exactly? You keep acting like you own him.”
He hesitates.
Then he straightens, like he’s made a decision.
“My name is Callum Fraser,” he says. “And he raised me.”
The word raised me, lands like a gut punch. Did her father have an illegitimate son that she knew nothing about? He could raise Callum Fraser, but refused to see her?
Something twisted painfully in her chest.
“He rescued me,” Callum continues, voice rough. “He and my father were bandmates. Keir gave me a home when no one else would.”
Her anger flares, hot and immediate. “So he had room in his life for you, just not his daughter.”
Callum flinches. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Wasn’t it?” she demands. “Because it sounds exactly like that.”
She hates the jealousy burning through her. Hates that she wants to scream at him for existing in a space she was never allowed into.
“You got the version of him I never did,” she says. “The one who showed up.”
Callum’s voice drops. “You think it was perfect?”
“I think it was something,” Isla says. “Which is more than I got.”
Silence stretches.
Callum runs a hand through his hair. “He wasn’t easy.”
“I’m sure.”
“He was complicated. Selfish. Brilliant. Exhausting.”
“I’m sure,” she repeats, bitter. “But he chose you. Not me.”
Callum looks at her, really looks, and something shifts in his expression.
“He chose you, too,” he says quietly.
Isla laughs, the sound breaking. “No. He didn’t.”
“He sent money. He kept tabs—”
“He stayed away,” she cuts in. “And that was a choice.”
They stand there, grief crackling between them, attraction humming beneath it in a way she hates.
She hates that he smells like soap, smoke, and something grounding.
She hates that he knows things about her father she will never know.
“Why does this bother you so much?” Isla asks suddenly. “Why does my truth threaten you?”
Callum’s jaw tightens. “Because I loved him. I wasn’t his biological son, but he took care of me and raised me like his own after my father was killed in a plane crash.”
The admission hits hard.
“So did I,” Isla says softly. “I envisioned him coming to one of my concerts. I had dreams that someday we would reunite, and he would ask for my forgiveness. And now, those dreams are just dust in the wind.”
Her chest aches with unshed tears. Tears for the dreams that would never be realized.
Callum looks away first.
For a moment, the anger drains out of the room, leaving only rawness behind.
“You didn’t fake it,” he says finally.
“I’m proud of that,” Isla replies.
“You shouldn’t be.”
“Why?” she challenges. “Because it makes you uncomfortable?”
“Because it hurts,” he says.
“So does pretending.”
Footsteps echo in the corridor outside, pulling them back toward reality.
Callum steps away, creating distance that feels like loss. “This isn’t over,” he says quietly.
“No,” Isla agrees. “It isn’t. Anytime you want to spar, let me know. I’m up for the challenge.”
They leave separately.
Back in the gallery, the party continues as if nothing has shifted. Laughter. Glasses clinking. Lives moving on.
Isla catches her reflection again, eyes bright, cheeks flushed, alive with emotion.
She presses a hand briefly to her chest.
She didn’t fake grief.
She told the truth.
And in doing so, she collided headfirst with the one man in this castle who loved her father enough to hate her for it.
Which somehow feels like the beginning of something far more dangerous than either of them is ready for.