Chapter 28: The Question

I couldn't stop turning the question over in my mind after I told Ethan about it, the words replaying themselves on a loop that wouldn't quiet no matter how many times I tried to reason my way past them. Madison had asked about a grandchild before I even suspected I was pregnant. That wasn't a lucky guess. That wasn't idle curiosity about a family she was marrying into.

"We need to talk to Victoria," Ethan said, already reaching for his jacket. "If Madison was circling something that specific, your mother may have heard more than she's told either of us."

I found Victoria in the solarium an hour later, a book open on her lap that she clearly wasn't reading, her eyes fixed somewhere past the glass walls at the gardens beyond.

"We need to ask you something," I said, sitting across from her without waiting for an invitation.

"I assumed as much, given the look on your face." Victoria closed the book slowly. "What is it this time?"

"Seven years ago, right before everything happened, Madison asked me a strange question about William restructuring his will around a grandchild." I watched my mother's face carefully as I spoke, and something in her expression shifted, some careful mask slipping half a second too late. "Before I even knew I was pregnant, Mother. How would she have known to ask that?"

Victoria's hands tightened around the book in her lap. "I don't know what you mean."

"You do," Ethan said, coming to stand beside me, his presence steady in a way I hadn't expected to lean on. "We've already spent hours untangling a financial conspiracy that started before Madison ever accused Olivia of anything. Don't waste our time pretending you don't know what we're asking."

Victoria's composure cracked visibly this time, her carefully arranged expression giving way to something rawer. "Madison had financial motives," she said finally, her voice quiet. "I knew that much. She was always calculating what she stood to gain from this family, long before the wedding was ever announced."

"You knew and you said nothing," I said, my voice shaking. "You let her destroy my entire life and you said nothing."

"I didn't know how far she would go, Olivia." Victoria's eyes were glassy now, her composure fully gone. "I want you to understand that. I knew she was ambitious. I knew she thought about money in ways that frightened me sometimes. I never imagined she would manufacture an entire betrayal to get you out of this house."

"You should have said something anyway," I snapped, standing so fast the chair scraped hard against the tile floor. "You should have warned me, or warned Ethan, or warned anyone at all instead of letting me walk into this alone."

"I was afraid," Victoria said, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, my mother's voice broke completely. "I was afraid of what would happen to me if I crossed her. I depended on this family's goodwill more than you ever understood, Olivia. I had nothing of my own, nothing except whatever access marrying William gave me eventually. I couldn't risk losing that over suspicions I couldn't prove."

I stared at her, old anger and something rawer, more painful, tangling together in my chest. "So you protected yourself instead of me."

"Yes," Victoria admitted, the word costing her visibly. "I did. And I have hated myself for it every single day since."

Ethan's jaw was tight beside me, his own anger radiating in the stiff line of his shoulders. "Did William ever confront you about any of this?"

Victoria's silence answered before her words did, a long, heavy pause that stretched out between all three of us.

"Yes," she finally said. "He confronted me about Madison before he died. He asked me directly whether I knew anything about her financial interests in this family. I told him the same thing I'm telling you now. Half-truths. Just enough to seem honest without exposing myself completely."

"When?" Ethan demanded. "When did he confront you?"

Victoria looked between the two of us, something in her expression finally settling into resignation, like she understood there was no more room left to hide behind vague answers.

"A few weeks before he died," she said quietly. "He told me he had proof Madison had been planning something for years. He said he intended to expose it before it destroyed this family completely."

The room went silent, the weight of her words settling over all three of us at once.

"He was going to expose her," I said slowly. "And then he died."

The words hung in the solarium air, none of us willing to be the first to say what all three of us were clearly thinking. I looked at my mother, at the way her hands had gone white-knuckled around the edge of the book still resting forgotten in her lap, and felt something cold settle low in my stomach.

"Did he tell you what kind of proof he had?" I asked.

"No. He was careful even with me, by that point. I think he'd stopped trusting anyone in this house completely, including himself for having missed it as long as he had." Victoria's voice wavered. "He only told me enough to make it clear he intended to act, and that I needed to decide whose side I wanted to be on before he did."

"Which side did you choose?" Ethan asked, his voice hard.

"I chose silence," Victoria said. "Which I understand now was its own kind of choosing, even if I told myself at the time it wasn't."

I stood, needing distance from the solarium, from my mother's carefully controlled grief, from the growing certainty that everyone around me had known pieces of this story while I spent seven years believing I understood the whole of it. "If William had proof, where would he have kept it? He hid the note. He hid the recording. He wouldn't have left something this important sitting in plain sight."

"I don't know," Victoria admitted. "But knowing William, he wouldn't have trusted a single hiding place. He would have scattered pieces of it, in case someone found one part before he was ready."

Ethan was already moving toward the door. "Then we keep looking. All of it. Every drawer, every panel, every place he might have thought to hide something this dangerous."

I followed him, my mother's voice trailing after us, quieter now, almost pleading. "Olivia. Whatever you find, be careful who you show it to. If William was right about Madison having help, that person is still in this house, or close enough to reach it."

I paused in the doorway, looking back at her, at the fear plainly written across her face for what felt like the first time in my entire life. "Then help us find them," I said. "If you're really sorry for what you didn't do seven years ago, help us finish what William started."

Victoria's eyes filled with tears she didn't bother hiding this time. "I'll help however I can," she said. "I owe you that much, at the very least. I owe you far more than that, if I'm being honest with myself for once."

I didn't answer her, not yet ready to offer forgiveness I wasn't sure I could give sincerely. But I held the door a moment longer than I needed to, leaving it open behind me as I followed Ethan down the hallway, a small, silent acknowledgment that the door between us wasn't entirely closed either.