Mia."
"Hear me out!" Mia pulled back, holding me at arm's length, her eyes scanning me up and down the way she always did when she hadn't seen me in a while, like she was taking inventory, making sure all of me was still intact.
"You look good, Ava," she said, nodding approvingly. "The city agrees with you."
"You don't look too bad yourself," I replied, taking in her glowing skin and the easy confidence she wore like a perfectly fitted coat. Whatever the past year had brought her, it had clearly been good. "Come on, let's get your bags sorted and get out of here. I want to hear everything."
She grinned, grabbing the handle of her suitcase. "Everything? That's going to take more than one conversation."
"Then we'll start with the highlights."
We made our way through the busy terminal, falling back into our old rhythm with embarrassing ease, talking over each other, laughing at things that probably weren't that funny to anyone standing nearby, finishing each other's sentences the way we always had. It felt like breathing. Natural. Effortless.
We had just stepped out into the warm afternoon air, heading toward the parking lot, when Mia suddenly looped her arm through mine and let out a long, dramatic sigh.
"Okay, so I have to tell you something," she said, her tone shifting just slightly, not serious exactly, but carrying the particular energy she got when she was building up to something.
I glanced at her sideways. "That sounds ominous."
"It's not ominous, it's just she paused, scrunching her nose the way she did when she was trying to figure out how to word something. "We might have less time to catch up than I originally planned."
I stopped walking. She turned to face me fully, holding both hands up in surrender. "You know I was looking forward to it being just us, doing our thing, catching up properly.
"But?" I pressed.
She exhaled. "But Arthur is coming."
The name landed quietly. Too quietly, considering what it did to my pulse every single time I heard it.
"Arthur," I repeated, keeping my voice completely, impressively neutral. "Your brother Arthur."
"Do I have another one?" she said, raising a brow.
"When?" I asked, starting to walk again because standing still suddenly felt like too much.
"A few weeks," Mia said, falling into step beside me. "Maybe three, give or take. It's not fully confirmed yet, but knowing him, once he decides something, it's basically already happening."
That was true. Arthur had always been decisive in that quiet, unshakeable way, the kind of person who didn't negotiate with a city so much as he simply acquired it. I had always admired that about him, even when it was mildly infuriating.
"What's bringing him here?" I asked, though I was genuinely curious now, beyond the part of me that was already doing something unhelpful in the background.
Mia's expression shifted into something that looked unmistakably like pride. "He's moving to the city."
I blinked. "Moving on it what does that mean?"
"It means," she said, with the gravity of someone delivering a headline, "that Arthur has identified this city as his next major acquisition target. He's been circling it for two years, apparently. Studying the skyline, the development corridors, and the undervalued districts. And now he's decided." She glanced at me. "When Arthur decides to move to a city, Ava, he doesn't just open an office. He reshapes it."
I stared at her.
"Mia," I said slowly, "what exactly is Arthur's company now? Last I heard, he had expanded into commercial property, but I didn't realise.
"Ava." She stopped walking and turned to look at me with an expression that suggested I had somehow missed something very obvious. "Voss Real Estate Group has residential towers in London, Dubai, Singapore, and New York. He was on the cover of Forbes last year. He was named one of the most powerful players in global real estate development three years running." She tilted her head. "The Voss Meridian Tower in Dubai? That's his. The waterfront precinct redevelopment in Singapore that won the architectural prize? His. Does any of that ring a bell?"
I stared at her.
Honestly? I had deliberately avoided paying too close attention to Arthur's career trajectory for reasons I was not going to unpack right now, standing in an airport parking lot in the afternoon heat.
"I knew he was doing well," I said carefully.
Mia let out a short laugh. "Doing well. Ava, the man doesn't develop properties, he dominates markets. He identifies cities others haven't caught up with yet, acquires land before anyone realizes its value, and then builds landmarks. Landmarks that change the skyline permanently. That's not doing well. That's playing an entirely different game from everyone else." She shook her head like she still couldn't fully believe it herself, and something was endearing about that, the way even his own sister hadn't quite gotten used to the scale of what he had built. "He's been in Architectural Digest twice and the Financial Times more times than I can count. Our father nearly wallpapered his study with the clippings."
"Did he?"
"...He absolutely wallpapered his study, yes."
I laughed despite myself, and Mia grinned.
"The point is," she continued as we reached my car and I popped the boot for her suitcase, "Arthur setting his sights on this city is a massive deal. It's been in the property news for weeks. People here are losing their minds over it, the investment, the jobs, the development pipeline he's expected to bring. There are already rumors about which districts he's eyeing, which parcels of land he's been quietly buying up through holding companies." She leaned in slightly, like she was sharing something conspiratorial. "He doesn't move loudly, Ava. He moves precisely. And by the time people realize what he's doing, he's already three acquisitions ahead of them."
I loaded her bag in and closed the boot, leaning against the car for a moment and letting that sink in.
Arthur. In my city. Not visiting. Not passing through. Planting a flag.
The same Arthur who had ruffled my hair when I was twelve and called me "Ava the Quiet" with the kind of easy fondness that had absolutely no idea what it did to me. The same Arthur whose quiet, measured confidence had always made a room feel smaller and more charged at the same time like the air pressure shifted slightly when he walked in. The same Arthur I had spent considerable effort not thinking about, across a year of silence, across oceans and skyline defining towers and Financial Times profiles I had not absolutely had not read in full more than twice.
I cleared my throat.
"So that's why we have less time to catch up," I said, pushing off the car and moving to the driver's side. "Because you'll be busy with his arrival."
Mia slid into the passenger seat, cradling the bouquet I had gotten her in her lap with a small, appreciative smile. Then she looked across at me with an expression I knew far too well, the one that meant she was seeing something I hadn't said out loud.
"Among other reasons," she said simply.
"What other reasons?"
She smiled. Slow. Knowing.
"Nothing," she said sweetly, turning to look out the window. "I'm just really glad to be back, Ava."
I narrowed my eyes at her profile for exactly two seconds before starting the engine.
Mia was back for five minutes, and she was already doing the most. Some things, it turned out, never changed.
But as I pulled out of the airport and merged onto the open road, the afternoon sun stretching long and golden over the city's skyline ahead of us, a skyline that, in a matter of weeks, a certain someone had apparently decided to own, I couldn't help the quiet, complicated feeling settling somewhere in my chest.
Arthur was coming.
And something told me that a man who reshaped cities for a living wouldn't leave much of anything or anyone unchanged.