Nadia was panicking.
She truly, genuinely could not think of anything to say.
Her thoughts were completely scattered, all over the place, racing in a hundred different directions at once.
If it had been about anything else—any other topic, any other question—she would have been able to answer immediately, confidently, with perfect precision.
But when it came to her daughter?
She herself didn't know the answers.
If she did, she would have brought Astrid back long ago. They would be in a happy, healthy relationship right now, mother and daughter united.
But they weren't.
They were distant. Apart. Broken.
And she had no idea how to fix it.
Because of that realization, all the thoughts and carefully prepared responses that she'd spent years developing completely scrambled in her mind, becoming an incoherent mess.
Her subordinates behind her were visibly scared, seeing their normally unshakeable leader falter like this for the first time.
