POV: Jasmine
The message came through his assistant, which was the first thing worth noting.
Not a call to Liam directly. Not a text. A formal written request, routed through the appropriate channel — Jackson Blackwood would like to arrange a brief video call at Jasmine's convenience to meet his granddaughter.
Three suggested time slots. A sign-off worded with the careful neutrality of someone who wanted his tone on record.
Liam told me that evening while Aurora was asleep. He read it off his phone and set it on the table between us.
I looked at it the way you look at something that hasn't moved yet but that you know is going to.
"I can be on the call with you. We set it up at the desk, I sit beside you — he sees both of us, he knows it's not just you."
He was already moving through it as he spoke, arranging the logistics, putting himself between me and the thing.
"Or we do it in the kitchen, the framing would be—" He stopped.
"I need to run this without you managing it."
"That's not what I'm doing," he stated.
"It's exactly what you're doing. And I understand why. But I need you to not do it." I held his gaze.
"Not because I don't want you near me. Because if you're in the frame with me he watches you instead of me, and I lose the information. I need to see what he does when he thinks it's just me and the baby."
He was quiet. I could see him choosing to stop — not simply agreeing, but making a decision about the impulse and sitting with it. Harder to watch than the organizing had been. I respected it more for that reason.
"Okay," he said finally.
"I want something from you in return. After the call ends — immediately after, not once you've had time to round the edges — I want everything he says. Word for word. Every comment, every question, in the order he says it."
"That's it?" he asked, looking at me intently. "Not — you're not asking me to be in the room afterward, or—"
"I'm asking you to be accurate. That's what I need from you. Not protection. Accuracy."
He looked at me for a moment. "You want to read him through what he's willing to say in front of you."
"I want to read him through what he's willing to say in front of his granddaughter. He might think those are the same thing. They're not."
"What's the difference?"
"In front of me he performs control. In front of her he might not be able to. She's new. He hasn't decided yet what she means to him, which means he hasn't decided yet what he's allowed to show." I paused. "That gap is the only honest thing he's going to give me."
Liam was quiet for a moment. Then: "Okay. Word for word. I'll remember everything."
"I know you will."
We sat with it for a moment. The table between us, the monitor on the counter, the quiet of the apartment around Aurora's sleeping.
"What do you think he wants?" Liam asked.
"Honestly? I'm not sure he knows yet."
I turned my coffee cup in my hands.
"I think he wants to see her because she's his blood and that's a reflex he doesn't fully control. And I think he also wants to see what I do when he looks at her. Whether I let him in or shut him out. Whether he can use either reaction."
"And which will you do?"
"I don't know yet. That's the answer I'm trying not to force before the call happens."
He looked at me. "You're going to be fine."
"I know. That's not what I'm worried about." I paused. "I'm worried about Aurora. What it means for her. Whether he's someone she should know or someone I need to keep distance from. I can handle Jackson. I've handled Jackson." I set down my cup. "She can't yet."
Liam didn't say anything for a moment. Then: "Whatever you decide after the call — I'll hold it with you."
"I know that too."
After he went to bed I stayed at the table.
Not planning. Something closer to clearing — going through the space in my mind where the call would happen and looking at every surface, the way you walk through a room before a difficult meeting and locate the exits.
What did Jackson want from a video call?
He wanted to see her. That was probably true, and I didn't know what to do with the truth of it — whether a man like Jackson could want something that simple, or whether the wanting always had a second floor.
He might want to see her because she was his blood. He might want to establish a claim.
He might want to see me holding her, to remind himself of the shape of what he still had over me.
Possibly all three at once, layered and covering for each other.
What I didn't know was what he would allow himself to show.
There was always something with Jackson that didn't fit the architecture of his control — a question with weight behind it he hadn't bothered to conceal, a look that lasted a fraction too long.
He had spent his entire life as the most powerful person in every room, and it had made him careless in a specific way.
The carelessness of someone who had never needed to be careful because caution was for people who could lose things.
He would perform. The grandfather meeting his granddaughter — warmth calibrated, interest displayed. He'd done harder performances in rooms full of people who wanted him to fail.
But I had sat across a table from Jackson Blackwood when he believed he had already won.
I knew what his control looked like, and I knew what it looked like when it slipped by fractions.
I knew the specific expression he wore when he was looking at something he had decided belonged to him.
I was going to watch for that expression.
I didn't reach a clean answer about what he wanted or what he would show. The honest answer was that I wouldn't know until it happened, and any certainty I built before then would be a story I was telling myself rather than information.
I had learned to distrust pre-built certainty. It made you stop watching.
So I stopped trying to predict and let myself sit with the fact of it — the request, the assistant's careful language, the three suggested time slots like a formal invitation to something that was never going to be formal.
Aurora made a small sound from the bedroom. A half-complaint. Someone shifting in sleep.
I listened until it stopped.
Then I went to bed, and I prepared myself the only way I knew how — by deciding to arrive without conclusions already made, to stay awake to whatever actually happened instead of the version I'd rehearsed. And I waited.