Chapter 5: What Victoria Decided
Victoria had not gone to her room.
She was in the sitting room at the end of the east wing — the one with the tall windows that faced the garden.
She had watched Richard cross the garden path from behind the curtain.
She had watched the gate close.
She had not moved.
Her phone had seven unread messages.
She had not opened any of them.
When Marcus came in, she was seated in the chair nearest the window with her hands folded in her lap.
She looked, in that moment, less like the woman who had cornered Elena in the hallway and more like someone waiting for a verdict she already knew.
Marcus: I want you out of this house by Friday.
Victoria: You can't do that.
This is my home too.
Marcus: My attorney disagrees.
The estate is held under the Vance family trust.
Your name was never added.
We discussed it before the wedding and you agreed.
I have the signed document.
Victoria: That was a formality.
You know that.
Marcus: It was a legal agreement.
My attorney is treating it as one.
Victoria looked out the window.
The garden was empty now.
The gate was still.
Victoria: What are you going to do about Leo?
Marcus: I'm going to make sure he's safe.
Victoria: That's not an answer.
Marcus: It's the only answer I have right now.
Victoria: He's still my son.
Whatever you think of me, whatever Richard — whatever happened — I carried him.
I gave birth to him.
That is not nothing.
Marcus: No.
It isn't.
Something in his voice shifted on those three words.
Not softer, exactly.
But different.
Victoria: Then don't take him from me.
Marcus: I'm not taking him from you.
I'm removing you from a situation where you k*cked at a woman who was holding him.
Those are not the same thing.
Victoria's jaw tightened.
Victoria: I wasn't going to hurt him.
Marcus: You weren't in control of yourself.
That's worse, Victoria.
That means you don't know what you would have done.
She turned from the window then.
Her eyes were dry.
Victoria had never been a woman who cried easily, and she wasn't going to start now, not in front of him.
Victoria: I want to see him before I go.
Marcus: I'll arrange it.
With Elena present.
Victoria: She's a maid, Marcus —
Marcus: She is the reason our son was not dropped on a hardwood floor this afternoon.
She held him when you were swinging your leg at her.
So yes.
Elena will be present.
Victoria stood.
She smoothed the front of her gray jacket — the same one she had been wearing in the hallway.
She looked at Marcus for a long moment.
Victoria: Did you ever love me?
Or was I always just an arrangement?
Marcus looked back at her.
Marcus: I loved who I thought you were.
I spent a long time trying to find her again after she disappeared.
Victoria: When did she disappear?
Marcus: I think you know.
She picked up her phone from the side table.
She looked at the seven unread messages and put it in her pocket without opening them.
Victoria: I'll be out by Friday.
She walked toward the door.
Stopped with her hand on the frame.
Victoria: For what it's worth — I did love you.
In the beginning.
Before everything became about what I needed and what I was afraid of losing.
I did love you.
Marcus said nothing.
He stood by the window where she had been standing and watched the empty garden.
Victoria walked out.
Her heels were quiet on the carpet of the east wing.
Then sharper on the marble of the main hall.
Then gone.
Marcus stood at the window for a long time.
Then he went upstairs to relieve Elena.
He knocked on the nursery door.
Marcus: Elena.
It's me.
A pause.
The lock turned.
The door opened.
Elena stood in the doorway with Leo asleep against her shoulder, one small fist curled near her collarbone.
She looked exhausted.
She looked like she had been holding her breath for two hours.
Elena: Is everything all right, Mr.
Vance?
He looked at his son's face.
The small, slack-mouthed sleep of a child who had no idea what had happened around him today.
Marcus: Not yet.
But it will be.
Elena nodded.
She stepped aside to let him in.
He reached out and took Leo carefully, the way he had learned to do in the first weeks — one hand under the head, one under the back, the transfer slow enough not to startle him.
Leo stirred, made a small sound, and settled again.
Marcus looked down at the boy's face.
Whatever the blood test said, this was still the child he had held on the night he was born.
That was not a simple thing to set aside.
He was not sure he wanted to.
But he was sure of one other thing, standing in the quiet of the nursery with Elena near the door.
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone.
He opened a new message thread and typed four words to his attorney.
*Add Elena to the list.*
Elena, watching from the doorway, did not see the message.
But she saw him look up from the phone with something in his expression that had not been there before.
May you like
She didn't know what it meant yet.
She would find out in the morning, when his attorney called her directly — and told her that Marcus Vance had instructed him to ensure that Elena Vasquez could not be removed from this household by anyone, for any reason, without her own consent.
