Chương 13
“Fine.”
“What if I never go to one of your family events?”
“Fine.”
“What if I tell reporters our father was a coward?”
“He was.”
“What if I tell them you were one sometimes too?”
Alexander put his hands in his coat pockets.
“I was.”
Anna slowed.
“You don’t defend yourself much anymore.”
“I hired people for that.”
She laughed.
He smiled.
Then the smile disappeared.
“There is one condition.”
She stopped walking.
“There it is.”
“It’s not legal.”
“What?”
“If you take the trust interest, I want you to learn what it owns.”
“Why?”
“Because our father spent his life using money as a substitute for responsibility. I don’t want to hand you a pile of assets and repeat the same pattern from a more flattering angle.”
Anna stared at him.
“That is unbearably reasonable.”
“I practiced.”
She resumed walking.
“Fine.”
“Fine means?”
“Fine means I’ll learn.”
“And the agreement?”
“I’ll sign after Maya tries to murder your lawyers one more time.”
“That seems fair.”
Victoria’s case ended eleven months after the ballroom.
There was no explosive trial.
Anna had prepared for one.
She had spent hours reviewing photographs of her injuries and listening to herself describe the service corridor in the present tense.
Then Victoria accepted a plea agreement.
The final charges and conditions were more complicated than the public wanted. There were criminal penalties, probationary conditions, mandated treatment, financial restitution, and restrictions involving Anna.
Victoria did not go to prison for years.
Online strangers called that injustice.
Some called it privilege.
Others said the prosecution had been political.
Anna found herself less interested in satisfying any of them.
She attended the sentencing.
Victoria entered wearing a dark gray suit.
No diamonds.
Her blonde hair was shorter.
For almost a year Anna had pictured her as she looked in the ballroom: blue velvet, perfect posture, hand around a white apron strap.
The woman who sat at the defense table looked smaller.
Anna resented that.
She did not want Victoria humanized.
Human beings were harder to hate efficiently.
Before sentence was imposed, Victoria asked to speak.
Her lawyer touched her elbow.
Victoria nodded and stood.
She did not turn toward the cameras.
There were none allowed inside.
She looked at the judge.
Then, finally, at Anna.
“I have spent most of this year trying to explain what I did in ways that made me less ashamed of myself.”
Her voice was quieter than Anna remembered.
“I said I was frightened. I was. I said I believed Ms. Mercer was trying to destroy my family. I did believe that. I said I was under emotional strain. I was.”
Victoria swallowed.
“None of those facts moved my hand.”
Anna’s fingers tightened around the bench.
Victoria continued.
“I hit her because I believed I was allowed to.”
Alexander, seated two rows behind Anna, did not move.
“I believed my home, my husband’s name, my position, and my anger made her smaller than me. I had treated people that way before without striking them. I told myself that was different.”
Victoria glanced down.
“It wasn’t different enough.”
Anna felt no relief.
No triumph.
Victoria’s apology did not return skin to her back or sleep to the weeks afterward.
It did not undo the moment Anna heard a leather crop cut the air and understood that another adult had decided pain was an acceptable way to silence her.
Victoria looked at her.
“I am sorry.”
Anna did not nod.
Victoria’s eyes filled.
Anna still did not nod.
She did not owe Victoria help carrying the apology.
Outside the courthouse, reporters shouted questions.
Anna had prepared one statement.
Maya stood beside her.
Alexander remained inside.
That had been Anna’s request.
She stepped toward the microphones.
“I’m glad the criminal case has ended. I’m grateful to the hotel employees and witnesses who told the truth even when doing so was difficult. I’m not going to discuss Victoria Hale’s sentence beyond that.”
Someone shouted, “Are you now officially an heir to the Hale fortune?”
Anna almost laughed.
A year, and that was still the question.
She looked toward the reporter.
“My father was Nathan Hale. A DNA test established that. The rest of my family’s financial arrangements are private.”
“Will you change your name?”
“No.”
“Do you forgive Victoria?”
Anna paused.
“No.”
The reporters reacted.
She continued before they could turn it into something larger.
“I also don’t spend every day hating her. Those are different things.”
Another question.
“Do you forgive your father?”
Anna stared at the microphones.
Nathan’s letter existed in an archival sleeve in Maya’s office.
Margaret’s photograph was still on the refrigerator.
The old support payments had been accounted for.
The unsigned trust had been examined.
The harm had been named so many times that some days it felt less like pain and more like paperwork.
“No,” Anna said.
She stepped away.
That evening, Alexander came to her apartment for dinner.
Not a celebration.
Priya had invited him without asking Anna because she believed family boundaries were “a colonial invention.”
Alexander brought wine.
Priya inspected the bottle.
“How much?”
He looked at Anna.
“Is this a test?”
“Yes,” Anna said.
“Thirty-two dollars.”
Priya looked disappointed.
“Character growth.”
Alexander took off his coat.
He had become marginally better at being in their apartment.
The first time, he had stared at the radiator when it clanged as if expecting a boiler explosion.
Now he merely frowned at it.
“I still think that thing is dangerous.”
“It’s rent stabilized,” Priya said. “Show respect.”
They ate spaghetti.
Anna had made it because she wanted to.
She burned the garlic bread by accident.
When smoke reached the detector, Alexander stood immediately.
Priya pointed a fork at him.
“Sit down, billionaire. We have a system.”
She opened the kitchen window.
Anna waved a dish towel beneath the alarm.
The beeping stopped.
Alexander looked between them.
“That’s the system?”
“It has a hundred percent success rate,” Anna said.
May you like
They ate the burned bread.
After Priya left to meet someone she refused to describe as a date, Anna and Alexander washed dishes.
