All Chapters of The revenge of the fallen heiress : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The house was more quiet at night. During the day there was always something. Clara moving around the rooms, phone calls, the distant sound of the city rising up in the glass wall. But at night, when all of that stopped, the silence had a particular quality to it. Heavy and wide. The kind of silence that gives your thoughts too much room to move around in. I had always struggled with that kind of silence. In my old life, I had filled it with Michael. With the sound of him in the next room, the television he left on when he was working late, his voice on the phone, even the particular sound of his breathing when he was asleep beside me. For years I had not known how much of my own quiet I had been filling with him until he was gone and the silence rushed back in. Now the silence was Vivian's and it was huge. I was in her study again, late on a Thursday evening, going through a box of personal documents that Mr.Walter had retrieved from a storage facility where Viv

There are some pains that do not announce themselves loudly. They do not arrive with drama or noise. They do not crash the way anger does, or flood the room the way grief sometimes does. They come quietly instead The loss of my baby was that kind of pain. I had been carrying that pain since before I died. Through the wedding preparations and the slow unravelling of my marriage and the careful collection of evidence against Michael and Annabel. Through the alley and the phone call and the fireworks in the sky. Through waking up in Vivian's body and learning her name and walking into a boardroom and dismantling men who had helped themselves to things that were not theirs. I had carried it through all of it, quietly, in the lowest part of myself, not looking at it directly because I could not afford to. Because looking at it directly would have stopped me from being able to function and I needed to function. I needed to be sharp and clear and forward-moving and g

The day came.I dressed carefully.Not in anything that announced itself. Nothing that said money or power or look at me.A dark charcoal suit, well cut but not loud. Low heels.My hair pinned back simply. I wanted to walk into that room looking like a woman who had nothing to prove, because women who have nothing to prove are the most difficult to read and I needed Samantha to work a little to read me.I arrived at the place twelve minutes early.That was deliberate too.I did not want her to watch me enter. I wanted to already be there, already settled, already present, when she arrived. I wanted her first impression of me to be gentle.The dining room was exactly as I had hoped.Small. Four tables, only two of which were occupied, both by men eating alone with newspapers and the particular focused silence of people who valued their privacy above everything. The walls were dark . The light came from lamps on the tables and a row of narrow windows overlooking a courtyard. There

Looking at him like a stranger I finally changed my position again to the tall window that overlooked the garden below.A deliberate choice.The window gave me a clear view of everyone without putting me in the center of it.I could see without being the most visible person, that's how I actually wanted it to be.I held my champagne glass,and I watched.Michael was still in the room.I had been tracking him after I felt his eyes all over me.He had moved from the three men,and was talking with the head of the representative of the city council.I turned back to the window, below the garden,a small light had been strung through the trees.They were beautiful, simple and warm.The light reminded me of the fireworks. Six months of preparation,that was what the press had reported at the time of the wedding.Michael Raymond had spent six months preparing an elaborate fireworks display for his new bride.And I had watched those fireworks from an alley, bleeding, fading.I pressed my finger

The accident was no accident Some truths arrive quietly.Then you will understand that the world you thought you were living in was slightly different from the world you were actually living in. And the difference between those two worlds is big.It started with Maria.Three days after the gala, she came into the study in the early afternoon with a folder and set it on the desk in front of me.I looked at the folder. Then I looked at her."What is this?" I asked."Research," she said simply. "I thought you would want to know about the accident,and I did some research. I was really thorough with it."Truth be told,I needed this. Yes, to know how the accident happened.Maria had not asked questions yet. She had simply done what she thought was best for me, maybe trying hard to prove to me that she was really on my side.I opened the folder.The accident had occurred on a Thursday evening.Vivian had been driving home from a late meeting, alone, as she usually does. The road was one s