I handed my clipboard back to my general manager, Marcus, and answered calmly. “The ownership plaque.”
“No,” she snapped. “I mean you being here.”
“I’m here because this is one of my properties.”
Trevor frowned. “Your property?”
I turned slightly toward him. “Yes.”
Vanessa stared. “That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
Her eyes moved over my clothes—navy trousers, cream blouse, tailored coat, not my usual work attire—and I could practically see her rewriting years of assumptions in real time. Vanessa had always mistaken quiet for lack. If I didn’t celebrate a win loudly, she assumed there wasn’t one. Meanwhile, I had been buying buildings.
My mother finally spoke. “Olivia… you own Bellamy House?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“Almost five years.”
That seemed to upset Vanessa more than anything else. “Five years? And you never told us?”
I almost smiled. “You never asked.”
