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Chapter 33
publish date:
2026-07-16 22:05:47
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Claimed by my ex husband’s uncle Chapter 47
THE JOURNALISTLUCIEN'S POVPetra Voss reaches Gerald in November with a formal inquiry letter. She is the journalist whose coverage of the Blackwood Holdings case was, by the standards of financial journalism, both thorough and accurate — six articles over ten months, each building on the last, each one correct in a way that makes her more concerning rather than less. A journalist who gets things wrong can be corrected. One who gets things right can only be managed.The letter is precise and professional and notable for what it doesn't say. It refers to "aspects of the familial relationships central to the case that bear directly on the legal outcomes and the human story of the past eighteen months." That phrase is a journalist's careful way of naming something specific without naming it directly in a formal inquiry — because naming it too bluntly risks the inquiry being declined before the conversation begins.She knows about the DNA. She is being careful about when she deploys that
Claimed by my ex husband’s uncle Chapter 46
THE APPEALELENA'S POVThe letter from Margaret's legal team arrives on a Monday morning in November, and Gerald calls before I finish reading the cover page."Two grounds," he says, when I answer. "The first is procedural — they're arguing a due process irregularity in her airport detention. It's thin and won't survive scrutiny, but it requires formal response and extends the timeline." A pause. "The second ground is the one that needs your attention. They're appealing the concealment charge connected to your birth registration. Their argument is that the private genealogical registry doesn't carry the same legal weight as an official birth record, and that Margaret's failure to update it doesn't constitute criminal concealment under the statutes cited. They're also mounting a chain-of-custody challenge on the DNA evidence.""The lab is certified," I say. "The chain of custody was documented from the start.""It was," Gerald says. "Their challenge won't succeed. But it buys time, and
Claimed by my ex husband’s uncle Chapter 45
A YEAR AFTERELENA'S POVThe book comes out on a Thursday in October, fourteen months after the morning I sat in the study with a legal pad and wrote the first fourteen pages.It is called What He Built: The Life and Truth of Robert Vale. It is two hundred and sixty pages, and it is the most difficult thing I have ever written, and it is accurate — about him, about what was done to him, about what he built and why he built it and the price he paid for the building. About the years I spent not knowing the full shape of the story I was inside. About what it is to be the daughter of a man who trusted the truth more than he trusted his own safety.The book is reviewed in three national publications in the week of its release. Two of the reviews are the kind that a first-time author does not anticipate receiving — serious and specific and written by people who have read it rather than read about it. The third review is in a financial publication and is largely concerned with the Blackwood
Claimed by my ex husband’s uncle Chapter 44
WHAT WE BUILDELENA'S POVThe first weeks are everything no one prepared me for, which is to say they are difficult and extraordinary and I am more tired than I have been in my entire life and also more alert, in the specific way of someone whose entire perceptual system has reorganized itself around a single new priority.Roberta sleeps in the room that was always going to be hers — it was prepared in February, quietly, over a weekend when Clara took the project on with the focused joy of someone doing something that is entirely for someone else and finding this sufficient. The room is warm and pale and has a lamp that casts the particular soft light of a room that was designed with care. It has a shelf with three books already on it, because Lucien put them there, and a botanical print on the wall that came from the study when I decided it belonged in her room, and a small hand-sewn item from Sophia that is the most technically imperfect and emotionally perfect object in the space.
Claimed by my ex husband’s uncle Chapter 43
THE CHILDLUCIEN'S POVElena goes into labour on an April morning at four-seventeen.I know this because I was awake. I have been sleeping poorly for three weeks, not with the restlessness of anxiety but with the heightened attentiveness of someone whose body has apparently decided that the approach of a significant event requires more alertness and less sleep than the ordinary run of nights. Elena, who is the one doing the considerable physical work of the approach, has been sleeping well. The inverse distribution of this seems entirely appropriate and I have not remarked on it.She comes to my room — she has been in my room most nights for two months, which is where she has been most comfortable sleeping, and which has been a state of affairs that developed without a conversation about it and which I find I do not require a conversation about — at four-seventeen and says, in the specific calm voice of someone who has prepared extensively for this moment, that it has begun and that s
Claimed by my ex husband’s uncle Chapter 42
VICTOR'S SENTENCINGELENA'S POVI am in the courtroom when the sentence is read.This was not required. Gerald told me, with his characteristic precision, that my presence was optional — that the victim impact statement I submitted in writing would carry full legal weight in the proceedings regardless of whether I attended in person. He said it in the way that Gerald says things he wants me to have the full information for before I decide, which is the way he says everything.I decided to attend in person.Lucien is beside me, he drove. He dressed as he dresses for things that matter — dark jacket, white shirt, everything fitted and deliberate without being performative. He has said almost nothing since we arrived, which is not his silence of discomfort but his silence of presence. He is here to be here. He is not here to manage anything about how I experience it.The courtroom is formal and functional and not particularly dramatic in its physical character, which is the nature of cou
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