The first week of a second life, counted in small victories and one catastrophic realisation.
This was the part she hadn't planned for, which was a failure of planning she couldn't forgive herself for — she had spent so much time thinking about Lucien, about the industry, about Ivy, that she had forgotten her mother existed in 2016.
Mei Hart was sixty-one and still running the small tailoring business she'd started after Lina's father had died, six years before the marriage to Lucien. She had been quietly relieved by that marriage, Lina now understood — not because she didn't love her daughter but because the business was struggling and the Cole alliance had taken the pressure off a debt Lina had never been told about.
