Chapter 85: Catherine’s Relief

The Hawthornes retreated without drama.

There was no apology. No acknowledgment of wrongdoing. Just distance—executed with the same cold efficiency they had always used to assert dominance. Invitations stopped arriving. Calls went unanswered. Margaret Hawthorne’s name vanished from Catherine’s calendar as if it had never occupied space there at all.

Power, Catherine realized, did not argue. It withdrew.

She noticed the change first in the silence.

The phone that once rang with instructions and