CHAPTER 140: The Letter

POV: Selene Castellano

She found it on his desk.

It was just a typical Tuesday morning, and she was searching for a pen, not trying to snoop around or anything. Avalon had already left for Nexus, so the apartment was really quiet. She was trying to find that one pen she needed, that's all.

An envelope, opened, the letter half pulled out.

She probably wouldn't have given it a second glance if the foundation's name hadn't been printed on the letterhead, but since it was, her curiosity got the better of her.

She pulled it out fully.

Read it.

Read it again.

The letter was from a law firm she didn’t recognise. Three pages, dense, precise, the language of people who had been building a case for a long time and had finally decided it was ready.

The summary was simple.

Between 1978 and 1991, Pierce Holdings used a financial instrument called a community displacement bond — legal at the time, no longer legal — that systematically redirected development funding away from three San Francisco neighbourhoods.

Those neighbourhoods were the Mission, the Tenderloin, and Bayview.

The same neighbourhoods where the Pierce Foundation worked with local community groups.

The same neighbourhoods that were home to the forty-two young people Kevin Walsh worked with.

Susan Park’s clients.

David Torres’s food access program.

The letter alleged that Pierce Holdings had directly contributed to the economic conditions that created the gaps the foundation was now trying to close.

And it alleged that Avalon Pierce had known about this since March.

March.

Eight months ago.

Before the foundation had a name.

She put the letter down on the desk.

March was before the first board presentation. Before all of it.

He’d known before all of it.

She called him.

He answered on the second ring.

“Hey,” he said. “ I was just about to—”

“Come home,” she said.

A pause.

“What happened?”

“Come home,” she said again. “ Now.”

He walked in twenty minutes later.

Saw her face and then the letter on the desk and just knew he was in trouble

“Selene—”

“Don’t,” she said. “ Don’t start with my name like that. Just tell me it’s not true.”

He looked at the letter.

“I can’t tell you that,” he said.

The room went very quiet.

She said it as if she were stating a fact, her voice firm but with a hint of emotion beneath. "You were aware of it all along," she continued, "even before we began working on the project, before I spent hours writing fourteen pages at five in the morning, before Nene brought it up on that board presentation slide, before anything else happened." Her tone was steady, but it was clear she was struggling to keep it that way. "You knew our company was partly responsible for the problems we were trying to solve, and yet you didn't say a word." The accusation hung in the air, waiting for a response.

“It’s more complicated than—”

“Don’t tell me it’s complicated,” she said. “ Tell me why you didn’t tell me.”

He sat down.

He told her that he had discovered it back in March. It was Margaret who actually found the old records when they were going through the estate. He had his lawyers look over everything, to make sure he understood what it all meant before talking to me about it.

“Eight months,” she said.

“I know.”

“Avalon, eight months.”

“I know,” he said again.

She said that the foundation is based on the idea that they are trying to help. They think they are doing good by going into these communities. But what if that's not true? What if they are actually the reason why there's a problem in the first place? They've been talking to people, saying they want to fix the issue, but maybe they're the ones who caused it. Maybe they've been standing in the way, stopping things from getting better.

“The foundation’s work is still real,” he said. “ What it’s doing is still—”

She said, "That's not what matters, the thing is I've been in meetings with Susan Park, Kevin Walsh, and David Torres, and I've been completely open with them about everything, absolutely everything. But you didn't tell me something that could change how they see us, and that's what bothers me."

He had no answer for that.

Because she was right.

She picked up the letter.

“I’m pregnant,” she said quietly. “ And I’m standing here wondering if I actually know who I’m building a life with.”

“Selene—”

"I'm not going anywhere," she said, her voice firm and resolute. "I'm not budging on this. But I need you to get what's going on here. This isn't just about you not telling me something, like forgetting to mention a dinner meeting. This is something more, something bigger. You need to understand that."

“I know what it is,” he said.

“Then say it out loud,” she said. “Say what you did.”

He stood up.

“I managed the information that was yours to have,” he said. “ I decided I’d understand it fully before I brought it to you and eight months passed and I kept finding reasons to wait and by the time I should have told you everything was already built and I didn’t know how to tell you without feeling like I’d poisoned it.”

“So you kept poisoning it quietly instead.”

He said nothing.

Because that was exactly what he’d done.

She turned from the window.

“I need to think,” she said. “ I need to call Amara and James, we need to figure out what this means for the foundation before it becomes public because that letter has a response deadline of thirty days and we have twenty-two left.”

"I know," he said, "I've been trying to work out how to..."

She spoke up, her voice firm. "We'll figure it out together," she said. "Not just you, not by yourself. We'll do it as a team, we'll work through it together."

He looked at her.

“Yes,” he said. “ We.”

She picked up her phone.

Walked toward the study.

“Avalon.”

“Yes.”

"We are going to make things right," she said. "The foundation, the communities, and the damage caused by Pierce Holdings - we're going to fix all of it. We'll do it fairly and honestly, even if it means spending a lot of money. And we will pay for it, no matter what it takes."

“I know,” he said.

“But right now,” she said, “I need you to sit with what you did.”

She went into the study.