THE HEIR'S REVENGE

chapter 36

She chose a tea house called Meridian.

It was in the west side of the city not too far from the Ashford neighbourhood where the Pierce family lived. It was a quiet place with small round tables and soft lighting and the kind of atmosphere where people spoke in low voices without being told to.

I told Henry where I was going before I left the office.

He did not like it.

"You should not go alone," he said and his voice was the flattest I had ever heard it which meant he was more worried than he wanted to show.

"She called me directly," I said. "That means she wants to talk without any performance around it. If I show up with security she will shut down and we will learn nothing."

"And if she has something planned?"

"Victoria does not operate that way," I said. "She is careful. She does not do anything that can be traced back to her directly. A public tea house in the middle of the afternoon is the safest possible place she could have chosen." I paused. "She chose it on purpose."

Henry looked at me for a long moment.

"I will have two agents outside the building," he said. "You will not see them and neither will she. But they will be there."

I agreed to that and left.

The tea house was half full when I arrived.

Soft music was playing somewhere. A woman at the counter smiled when I walked in and asked if I had a reservation. I gave the name Victoria had told me to use and the woman nodded and led me to a table near the window at the back of the room.

Victoria was already there.

I had not seen her in person since the night I left the Pierce house. That night she had been standing in the living room in one of her designer dresses telling me I was a mistake and that my mother was a pathetic maid and that I should get out before she called security.

She looked exactly the same.

That was the first thing that hit me when I saw her. She looked completely the same. Same elegant posture. Same cold beauty. Same expensive clothes. A cream coloured coat over a dark dress and her hair done perfectly and small diamond earrings catching the light from the window. She looked like a woman without a single problem in the world.

She was watching me walk toward her with an expression I could not immediately read.

I sat down across from her.

We looked at each other for a moment without saying anything.

A waiter came. Victoria ordered tea. I ordered nothing. The waiter left.

"You look well," Victoria said.

Her voice was exactly as I remembered it. Smooth and controlled. Every word placed carefully like she had already decided what she was going to say and in what order.

"You called me," I said. "So talk."

She smiled slightly. Not a warm smile. The kind of smile that is more about composure than happiness.

"You have always been direct," she said. "I will give you that."

"I did not come here to compliment Victoria."

She looked at me for a moment and then she picked up her tea when it arrived and held the cup in both hands.

"I wanted to see you," she said simply. "I wanted to sit across from you and see for myself who you have become."

"And?"

"And you are exactly what I was afraid you would be," she said. "Calm. Focused. Patient." She looked at me over the rim of her cup. "You are not like your father. Marcus was always afraid of everything. You are not afraid of anything."

I said nothing.

"That is not a criticism," she continued. "I am simply observing."

"Why did you really call me?" I asked again.

Victoria set her cup down carefully on the saucer. She looked out the window for a moment at the street outside. An ordinary Saturday afternoon. People walking. A child on a bicycle. Cars moving slowly through the west side traffic.

Then she looked back at me.

"I want to make a deal," she said.

I looked at her.

"I know what you are building," she said. "I know about the legal case. I know you have been collecting evidence. I know about that doctor who treated your mother." She said it all in the same calm voice like she was talking about the weather. "I have known for several weeks."

"And you are not worried?" I asked.

"I did not say that," she said. "I said I know. There is a difference." She folded her hands on the table. "I am worried enough to be sitting here talking to you directly which is not something I do easily."

"What is the deal?" I asked.

Victoria looked at me steadily.

"You stop what you are doing," she said. "You stop the legal process. You stop building the case. You leave the Pierce family alone." She paused. "And in return I give you something you want more than any of that."

"What could you possibly have that I want?" I asked.

"The full truth about your mother," Victoria said quietly. "Everything. Not what that doctor told you. Not what Marcus told you. The complete truth from the person who was actually there."

The tea house was quiet around us. The soft music continued. The woman at the counter laughed at something a customer said. Completely ordinary afternoon sounds.

I looked at Victoria Pierce across a small round table and I felt something move through me that was not anger and was not fear. It was something colder and more specific than either of those things.

She was sitting here offering me my mother's truth as currency.

She was trying to trade the details of what she had done to my mother as a way of saving herself from being held accountable for doing it.

"Let me understand you correctly," I said. "You want me to shut down a legal case that could send you to prison. And in exchange you will tell me how you destroyed my mother's life."