Chapter 8: Victoria Plays Her Last Card
The filing landed at Victoria's attorney's office at eleven the next morning.
By noon, Julian had received a call.
Not from Victoria's lawyer.
From Victoria.
He answered.
"You filed," she said.
"Yes."
"Julian." Her voice was different.
The composure was still there but it had changed texture — harder on the surface, something less certain underneath.
"I need you to understand what you are starting.
This will be in the press within a week.
The story of the Sterling divorce, the dead first love, the maid — do you understand what that looks like?
To the board?
To the company?"
"I do."
"Your sons will grow up with this as their origin story."
"Their origin story was already written by someone else," Julian said.
"I'm just finding out what it actually says."
A pause.
"I want to meet.
In person.
Without lawyers."
"No."
"Julian—"
"No, Victoria.
Whatever you want to say, say it through Daniel."
Another pause.
Longer.
"I want you to know," she said, "that I loved those boys.
Whatever else you believe about me — I loved them.
That was not a performance."
Julian was quiet for a moment.
"I believe you," he said.
"That's the part that makes the rest of it worse."
He ended the call.
The meeting Victoria had wanted happened anyway — not because Julian agreed to it, but because she arrived at the penthouse at two in the afternoon while Julian was in a call with Daniel.
The housekeeper, uncertain, let her in.
Julian found her in the hallway outside the boys' room.
She was standing very still, listening.
From inside the room came Elara's voice — low and steady — reading aloud from a picture book.
And underneath the words, barely audible, the soft rise and fall of the song.
Not performed.
Just present, the way breathing is present.
Victoria's face, in profile, was not the face Julian had seen in the sitting room two nights ago.
The calculation was gone.
What was left was something rawer and harder to name.
He said, quietly, "You need to leave."
She turned.
"I just wanted to—"
"I know what you wanted." He kept his voice low so the boys wouldn't hear.
"You wanted to see if it was real.
If she was real with them." He paused.
"Now you know."
Victoria looked at the closed door for one more moment.
Then she said, very quietly, "I told myself it was better for them.
I told myself that every day for four years." Her voice didn't shake.
"I need you to know I believed that.
I genuinely believed that."
"Victoria." Julian held her gaze.
"Believing it doesn't change what it was."
She nodded once.
A small, precise movement.
"My lawyer will be in contact tomorrow," she said.
"I've instructed him to cooperate with the document requests."
Julian went still.
"All of them?"
"All of them." She picked up her bag.
"Including the name of the physician who signed the d*ath certificate." She paused at the hallway entrance.
"It wasn't my idea to use Dr.
Harmon.
I want that on record.
It was suggested to me by someone I trusted.
I went along with it.
That is my responsibility and I'm not trying to reduce it." She looked at Julian one last time.
"But I didn't act alone."
She left.
Julian stood in the hallway for a long moment.
Then the door to the boys' room opened and Leo appeared, holding a picture book, looking up at his father with those too-old eyes.
"Is she gone?" Leo asked.
"Yes," Julian said.
Leo considered this.
Then he held up the book.
"Rose says this one has a dragon who learns to be kind.
Do you want to hear it?"
Julian crouched down to his son's level.
May you like
"Yes," he said.
"I really do."
