Chapter 231

VICTORIACelestine's final appeal was clever and sharp in all the ways I had expected from her.Her lawyers argued that the Cross trust had been wrongly released because my biological claim had been filed after the estate's original dispute had already closed. Technically, it was a thin argument. Anyone who looked at it closely enough could see it was more for delay than actually achieving anything. But delay was exactly what she needed. Another six months of back-and-forth in court would drain Hale Couture's executives and give whatever was left of the Syndicate's legal team time to regroup.Sandra walked me through all of it at the kitchen table that morning. She had her laptop open and was already talking through the standard ways we could push back.I stopped her halfway through. "I don't want to beat it the normal way," I said.Sandra looked at me over her glasses. "What are you thinking?""I want to meet with Celestine directly," I said. "No attorneys. No press, no record. Just

Chapter 232

VICTORIANathaniel Voss was found on a Thursday morning.He hadn't made it to wherever he had been trying to go. Federal agents found him at a private estate in Portugal, working alongside Interpol and the two prosecutors I had been in contact with for months. He was taken in without much of a struggle, which surprised a lot of people. He had been talked about for so long in such large terms that I think some people had started to imagine him as more than a man who had finally run out of places to go.Calloway sent me a text at 7:14 in the morning. I was in the middle of a board meeting for Hale Couture's expansion into the European market when my phone buzzed on the table. I picked it up, read it, set it face down, and went back to the presentation without saying a word.Clark was sitting two seats to my right. He didn't ask anything. He didn't say anything either. But I saw him notice the way my shoulders dropped just slightly, like a huge weight had just been eased off my shoulder

Chapter 233

CLARKI had been wanting to ask Victoria something for four months.The ring had been sitting in the inner pocket of my coat that whole time. A diamond ring set in platinum, so beautiful and not too large, which I’d taken a lot of time to carefully choose.I’d thought about how to do it a lot of times. And every single time, I’d talked myself out of it. Either the moment felt too big, too small, too carefully set up, or not thoughtful enough. I had walked into boardrooms full of people who wanted to destroy me and kept my voice steady. But this had me nervous in a way none of that ever had.The thing about Victoria was that she didn't need this. She didn't need me. She had rebuilt herself from the ground up with her own hands, and she had done it with more dignity than most people managed in a lifetime. What she had done was want me. And wanting, when you were someone like Victoria who could survive perfectly well without anyone, meant a whole lot more than needing.I almost asked her

Chapter 234

VICTORIAThe trial started on a bright Monday in January.I testified on the second day, wearing a white pantsuit which I had picked the night before while Clark sat on the edge of the bed and watched me hold it up against myself in the mirror. He didn't say anything because he actually didn't need to. We both knew what the color meant.I sat in the witness box for four hours. I didn't ask for a break. Of course, I didn't need one.I told them everything. The way the Hawthorne Syndicate had run their scheme for decades. The duplicate they had created of me. The forged documents and fake photographs. The way they had poisoned my mother and kept her hidden. The way they had used the leverage they had against women like me over and over again, for years, with no one stopping them.I listed names. I laid out the evidence piece by piece. I didn't even raise my voice once.When Celestine's attorney stood up and suggested that I had built my whole testimony around personal revenge, I looked

Chapter 235 — Epilogue

VICTORIAFOURTEEN MONTHS LATER…I was standing in front of a floor-length mirror in the most expensive suite at the Ritz Paris, wearing a wedding dress I had designed myself, and Isabella was crying, which she would definitely describe as completely unnecessary if she weren't also fixing my veil with hands that weren't entirely steady."You look obscene," she said, which was her way of saying something was really beautiful."Thank you," I said.My mother knocked and came in without waiting, which was something she had been doing since she moved to New York seven months ago. She walked into places like she belonged in them, which she did. She always had. She had just been kept out of them for too long.She was wearing the dusty rose gown I had made for her. Her hair was done. She looked like a woman who had survived a lot of hard things and came out of the other side still herself, which was the most beautiful way I knew to describe a person.She stood behind me in the mirror."Your fa

Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 231 - Chapitre 235

Chapter 231

Chapter 232

Chapter 233

Chapter 234

Chapter 235 — Epilogue