Chapter 14
Marcus asked to see my mother.
She said no.
He asked again a week later.
No.
Third week.
Still no.
That was harder for him than punishment.
He wanted a confrontation.
An apology.
A chance to perform remorse and receive some response.
Victoria gave him none.
Silence became boundary.
One evening he came to my study.
“How long?”
I knew what he meant.
“I don’t know.”
“She has to speak to me eventually.”
“No.”
His face tightened.
“I’m her son-in-law.”
“Not a key.”
Silence.
He sat.
For once, he looked exhausted rather than dangerous.
“I hated that she never respected me.”
I stared.
“Then you proved her right?”
He flinched.
Fair.
Maybe cruel.
Still true.
“She always made me feel like hired security.”
“Did you tell her?”
“She would laugh.”
“Did you try?”
“No.”
There.
Again.
Everyone in this story preferred manipulation to the vulnerability of asking.
Marcus continued.
“When Catherine wore the pendant, I thought…”
“What?”
“That maybe our side finally had something.”
I leaned back.
“Our side.”
There was the poison.
Marriage had become teams.
Hale versus Romano.
Catherine versus Victoria.
Serena versus me.
Marcus versus my name.
No wonder the house became a battlefield.
“You were never supposed to have a side.”
He looked at me.
“You were supposed to have a family.”
That sentence hurt him.
Good.
Maybe enough.
He whispered:
“I don’t know how to come back from this.”
“I don’t either.”
Honest.
No promise.
No threat.
Then I added:
“But if you spend your time trying to come back instead of understanding why you did it, you’ll repeat it somewhere else.”
He nodded.
May you like
For the first time, not because he agreed with the boss.
Because he heard his wife.
