Chapter 129: Choosing a new path

Selen sat in front of her computer, reading the email over and over again. It was an email from the office of chief executive officer of The Vanguard International Art Group, Robert Vance. He was the same man that she had her meeting with in their building.

She thought about how their message to her was either perfect timing or a wave that was going to hit her already shaky boat that was her career.

"Selen, I hope this mail finds you well. This is from the office of Robert Vance from the vanguard International Art Group. The aim of this message is to remind you that you are yet to give us a response from our previous discussion. We acknowledge your talent, but we are also a time sensitive organisation. We would like to hear a response from you by Monday, the following week. And if we get no response by then, then we will take that as a negative response. Please do consider before you respond to this mail as any response you give will be taken as an official answer. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Robert Vance

CEO, Vanguard International Art Group

Selen heaved a sigh as she continued to stare at her screen. This was such a sensitive time to make such a life altering decision.

If she decided to accept the job, then that would mean that their stay in England would no longer be temporary. She looked around the room, got up from her chair and looked out of the window.

Was Kent a place she did not mind raising her children in? She wondered. She had not planned for this, for any of it. But not returning to Spain as she planned began to feel like she was running away again. Just like she did with Kent.

Running away from what was, running away from Newton, and the life she had before all of this. But staying in Spain was not exactly the easiest option either. She would be moving back to a place that was clearly slowly losing its touch of home in their hearts.

To the kids, England was where their family were- their father and their grandparents. Even the uncle, aunt and cousin that they were yet to meet.

She thought about her unopened studio in Spain, but it only made her chest hurt more when she remembered how she even got it in the first place.

Would she have betrayed her office and bosses if she were to leave them now? It looked like they were having issues. But in her defence, no one told her anything.

She sat there for an hour, thinking about it all and by the time she tucked herself in bed, she was still as indecisive as she was in the beginning.

The following morning did not bring any fresh answers, only the immediate reality of her daily tasks. Selen walked down the stairs to the kitchen for coffee, her mind completely occupied by the looming Monday deadline.

She watched one of the staff members set out the breakfast plates for David, Daniel, and Diana, as she trained her posture to remain steady so the children would not pick up on her internal friction.

She knew that the clock was ticking, and Vanguard was not an organisation that waited around for lingering hesitation. When the triplets came down, they were already talking about their school plans and their father.

The mention of Clancy’s name caused a sharp, tight contraction in her chest, reminding her of the cold, detached look he had given her in the foyer. He was still coming around to see the children often, keeping his strict commitment to their upbringing, but the emotional wall between them was entirely unyielding.

If she accepted Vance’s offer, she would be locking herself into the same country as Clancy permanently, forcing herself to face that awkwardness week after week.

After insisting on driving the kids to school, Selen returned to the house and went straight back to her home office. She opened the administration for her ministry portal to check the foreign office budget logs, hoping to find a single logical explanation for the delayed healthcare stipends.

The system was entirely slow, throwing up error codes and security blocks that she had never encountered before. Her instincts flagged the anomalies immediately. The complete silence from her primary handler in Madrid was no longer just a delay, it was a deliberate choice to keep her in the dark.

She paced the length of the study, looking at the empty sofa where she and Newton had been just days before. Newton was gone, entirely focused on his new path in Madrid, and she couldn’t blame him. He had recognized that her heart was deeply divided, and he had chosen his own peace of mind over being her safety net.

She felt a profound wave of isolation settle over her. She was caught between a foreign office that was actively betraying her trust and a corporate conglomerate that was demanding an official answer by Monday morning.

The ticking of the wall clock seemed to grow louder as the afternoon progressed. Selen knew that her current position was becoming completely untenable. If her employers were hiding something massive from her, staying with them was no longer a viable parameter for her family’s security.

Vanguard offered a multi-billion-pound backing, an independent line of defense that could insulate her career from the crumbling framework of her foreign post. But the trade-off meant letting go of Spain entirely, giving up on overseeing the unopened studio, and accepting that England was their permanent home.

She thought about the kids’ lives and how much they had adapted to Kent. To them, this country was where their roots were beginning to grow. They did not know about the toxic history or the old grudges, they only knew that their father and grandparents were down the road.

If she dragged them back to Spain just to satisfy her own fear of facing the past, she would be doing it for purely personal reasons, not for what was best for the kids.

By the time the afternoon sun began to set, Selen sat back down in front of her computer. She opened the draft folder and looked at the empty response screen addressed to Robert Vance.