“You stopped being my family the moment you watched my daughter bleed in the dark and decided to finish your glass of wine,” I said quietly. “Your bail was set at five hundred thousand dollars. I wouldn’t pay five cents to pull you out of a fire. Enjoy your public defender, Beatrice. Do not ever call this number again.”
I hit the disconnect button, immediately dialing the phone company to permanently block the facility’s prefix.
I walked back to the kitchen island, picking up the yellow paintbrush. “Now,” I said to Lily, “where does this next star go?”
She smiled, pointing to a blank spot near her ankle.
We spent the rest of the afternoon in quiet contentment. The monster was locked in a cage, and the castle was ours again. But just as the sun began to dip below the tree line, casting long shadows across the driveway, the sharp chime of the doorbell rang out.
I wiped my hands on a towel and walked to the front foyer. I opened the heavy door to find a man in a rumpled suit holding a clipboard. A process server.
“Victoria Sterling?” he asked, bored.
“Yes.”
He handed me a thick, heavy, sealed manila envelope. “You’ve been served.” He turned and walked back to his sedan.
I closed the door, my heart performing a slow, heavy thud in my chest. I tore open the envelope. It was on thick, expensive legal stock, bearing the letterhead of the most vicious, expensive defense attorney in Manhattan—someone Beatrice could never afford unless she had found a benefactor. I scanned the first page, the legal jargon translating instantly in my mind.
It wasn’t just a plea for bail. It was a notice of intent. A massive, aggressive custody counter-suit filed on behalf of Beatrice, claiming I was an unfit, absentee mother who had fabricated the abuse to cover my own neglect, and threatening to drag every buried secret of my demanding, ruthless career into the unforgiving light of a public courtroom.
Chapter 6: The Rebuilding
A year later, the sprawling, cold Westchester estate was nothing but a memory, sold to the highest bidder in a private, unlisted transaction. I didn’t want the money; I just wanted the physical space out of our lives.
Instead, I was standing on the porch of a beautiful, sunlit brownstone in Boston, Massachusetts. The air here smelled of old brick and salty sea breeze. It was cozier, warmer, and entirely devoid of the ghosts of my past mistakes.
I leaned against the railing, holding a mug of dark roast coffee, watching the scene unfold on the small patch of grass in our front yard.
Lily was running.
Her cast had been off for nine months. The slight limp she had during physical therapy was entirely gone. She was darting through the oscillating spray of a garden sprinkler, screaming with genuine, unbridled joy as she chased two neighborhood children. There were no forced socialite events. There were no hidden bruises. She was just a kid, living a beautifully ordinary life.
I looked down at the small, wrought-iron table beside me. The morning paper was folded open to the metro section. Tucked away near the bottom of page four was a tiny, buried blurb.
