THE HEIR'S REVENGE

chapter 34

What manner of man was that? A man who would watch his wife suffer?

I thought about what sorry really meant, about what it weighed and what it bought and what it couldn't buy back regardless of how sincerely it was meant.

Sorry, never gave her back a single day.

Sorry didn't put her in a room with her father before he died. Sorry didn't give her the chance to know that she had been looked for, that she had been missed, that the life she had lost had been real and had belonged to her.

Sorry was the smallest possible unit of accountability and Marcus was offering it nineteen years too late and expected it to be worth something.

It wasn't worth anything. I was honest enough to acknowledge that. He had agreed to go on record, and that was worth something real. That would matter when the legal process moved forward. That would be part of what brought Victoria to account.

I didn't know why he was doing this and I hoped he wasn't just doing me a favour so I could return it in the past because I do not hope to have anything to do with the Pierce family or their business.

He was just frightened. He wanted to be accountable now but it was already too late. He spent time in a restaurant with his son who had stopped depending on him or even thinking about him on a Thursday evening.

That was what this was.

"Take me home," I said.

The driver pulled out into the street.

The city moved past the window. Late evening now, the lights are doing their reflective work on the wet road, the ordinary human business of the city proceeding around the car in all directions.

Lily.would be asleep now in her room, maybe after playing castle house. I felt bad sometimes that she couldn't bring her friends home.

Lily was intelligent and could make friends really quickly even though she doubted herself so many times. But we didn't know who those people were so we had to protect her from anyone until her security personnels were ready.

She would be asleep by now. In her room with the upgraded lock and the corridor camera and the two security personnel on the overnight rotation that Henry had arranged. She would be holding her rabbit with the emerald eyes and her face would have that small unconscious furrow between the brows that appeared even in sleep, working something out.

She had called me brother from almost the beginning.

Not because I had earned it. Not because I had done anything particular to deserve it. Just because she needed someone to be that and I was there and she had decided.

Children did that. They decided things with a completeness that adults spent their whole lives trying to recover.

I had spent nineteen years in a house where nobody decided I was anything worth being.

And then a five year old with a rabbit and emerald eyes had looked at me in a hospital room and decided I was her brother and the whole architecture of who I was had quietly reorganised itself around that decision.

That was what I was protecting.

Not the money. Not the name. Not the revenge, though the revenge was coming and it was going to be complete.

Her.

The car turned through the Blackwell gates.

The mansion was lit against the night sky, warm and solid, the lights on in the rooms I used and dark in the ones I didn't. Henry would be in his study, noting the time of my return. Mrs. Park would be in her room, one ear alert the way she always was overnight.

I got out of the car and walked up the front steps.

At the top I paused and looked back at the city once — the lights on the buildings, the bridge in the distance, the enormous ordinary life of Crestwood going on in all directions, indifferent and continuous.

Somewhere in it, Victoria Pierce was planning her next move.

She had eleven days left on her own timeline.

I had Marcus on record.

I had the medical documents from Dr. Chen.

I had the Doyle-to-Vane connection Henry had documented.

I had the rental car route.

I had Daniel's extortion recording.

I had everything I needed except the final arrangement of it, and that was a matter of days not weeks, and Henry was already working on it, because Henry was always already working on whatever came next.

I went inside.

The house was warm and quiet.

I stopped outside Lily's room and opened the door a few inches, just enough to see.

She was asleep. The rabbit was under her arm. The small nightlight shaped like a star that she had asked for two weeks ago was doing its quiet work in the corner.

I stood there for a moment.

Then I pulled the door closed softly and went to bed.

Tomorrow there was work to do.

There was always work to do. I've heard gossip about Hargrove coming back to the company. U didn't know why he was coming back when he was the one who decided to leave in the first place.

I just knew that something was definitely wrong when I set my eyes on that man. He did everything wrong around me and I wouldn't want to be friends with someone like that.

Henry reported the rumors going on in the company. Hargrove is hunting to be the CEO of my own company.

I smiled when I heard it because there was no way in hell that that would be possible. I had suffered so much and let people step on me without speaking up. That wouldn't be possible anymore.

Hargrove better get himself ready to face me.

What the hell.

But tonight, everyone I was doing it for was safe, and the walls around Victoria Pierce were one significant conversation closer to complete.

That was enough for tonight.

That was more than enough for one night.