Chapter Text
Prologue
February 2027
The Altessence Heritage Institute briefing was scheduled for nine o’clock.
Francesca Bridgerton arrived at eight fifty-three. She took the lift to the fourteenth floor, her badge was already in her hand and her heels were quiet against the marble. The building was intimidating, announcing itself before you walked in, with glass and steel and the silence of serious money. She had been in rooms like this before and she knew how to move through them.
The conference room was at the end of the corridor. Built with floor-to-ceiling windows. Inside, there were a long tape wood table and twelve chairs. Three people were already seated. Two she recognised from the briefing documents, one she didn’t. A coffee service was set in the centre. Through the window, there was a view of the city that on a clearer morning might have been worth looking at.
She chose her seat with the precision she applied to most things. Third from the head of the table, left side, back to the wall and face to the door.
She had known Michaela Stirling would be here.
She had known it for eleven days, since the project coordinator had sent through the full list of leads. She had read the name once, closed the document, and then opened it again to make sure.
Michaela Stirling- Lead architect
She had given herself exactly one evening to process it, a concept she had borrowed from her psychologist she was no longer seeing, and then she had moved on. She had prepared so she knew except what she was walking into. But this was the part she had controlled.
At nine oh two, the door opened.
Michaela Stirling walked in the way she had always walked into rooms, like the room had been waiting for her. She looked taller than Francesca remembered, or maybe just more settled in her height. Her black hair was straightened and slicked back into a flawless ponytail, she was wearing a sharp camel coat, high heels and had a leather portfolio tucked under one arm. She was already speaking to someone beside her, half-laughing at something, and the two people who had been quietly reviewing documents looked up without meaning to.
She made it three steps before she saw her.
The laugh didn’t die, it simply stopped. Like a sentence that runs out of words before it reaches a full stop.
For a moment Michaela didn’t move. Something crossed her face, something too fast to name but too slow to miss, something different than surprise, heavier. Francesca recognized it without needing to examine it.
Ten years.
Francesca did not look away. She had practiced this too. Not the looking, the staying, the decision not to find something suddenly interesting on the table in front of her, not to reach for her phone, not to give Michaela Stirling the satisfaction of being the thing that made her move first.
The room regained its energy, someone poured coffee, aphone buzzed on the table. Outside, London sat grey and indifferent under the February sky.
Finally, Michaela crossed the room and took the seat directly across from her.
Francesca wondered if it was a way to provoke her.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Then Michaela set her portfolio on the table, straightened it once, and then, looked up. And there was nowhere left to look but at her.
One second passed, then another.
“Francesca.”
Francesca held her gaze for exactly as long as it took to make clear that she had chosen to respond, and had not simply been caught off guard.
“Michaela” she said.
She opened her folder, and the meeting began.