The Hourglass Heart

I am Irena Nowakova, CEO of Aethelframe, and I live by one rule: control everything. When my brother, Ludwik, is killed in a suspicious 'accident', that control shatters. His final act was to name me guardian to his five-year-old daughter, Zoya - a variable I cannot afford. To maintain my grip on the company and hunt for Ludwik’s killer among the vipers on my board, I hire her teacher, Dariusz Pawlak, as a live-in tutor. He is everything I am not: warm, patient, and infuriatingly kind. He sees the cracks in my armor, and his quiet defense of me in a world of corporate sharks is a novel, disarming sensation. While my brother’s AI construct, the ‘Echo’, helps me navigate the investigation, Dariusz and Zoya are thawing a part of me I thought long dead. But Ludwik's secrets run deeper than corporate espionage. Hidden within the Echo is a final protocol I never knew existed, one that has already begun its countdown. What happens when the woman who controls everything discovers her own time is the one thing she can't manage?