THE HEIR'S REVENGE

chapter 37

"I would tell you everything," Victoria said. "Why it happened. How it happened. What I did and why I did it." She held my gaze. "You have been searching for answers for a long time Ethan. I can give you those answers."

"Why would I believe anything you say?" I asked.

"Because I have no reason to lie to you now," she said. "We are past the point of lies. You have too much already. The only thing I have left that is worth anything is the truth."

I looked at her face.

She was serious. That was a strange thing. She was not performing or manipulating in the way she usually did. She was genuinely sitting across from me making what she believed was a reasonable offer. She had looked at the situation around her and she had calculated that her best available move was to come and talk to me directly and offer me the one thing she had.

The truth about my mother.

As currency.

As a way to buy her own safety.

I sat with that for a moment.

Then I said something I had not planned to say before I sat down at that table. It came from somewhere quiet and certain inside me that had been building for weeks.

"Victoria," I said. "I already know what you did to my mother. I have the medical documents. I have a doctor who will testify about the poison you used. I have Marcus on record saying he suspected you from the beginning." I paused. "I do not need your version of the truth. I have enough truth already."

Something moved across her face. Very small. Very quick.

It might have been the first genuinely uncontrolled expression I had ever seen on Victoria Pierce's face.

"Then what do you want?" she asked. Her voice was still controlled but something underneath it was different now.

"I want you to be held accountable," I said. "Not by me personally. Not through anything I do to you directly. I want a court and a judge and a legal process to look at what you did to my mother and to Lily's parents and to make a proper decision about what happens next." I looked at her steadily. "That is all I have ever wanted. That is not something you can buy from me with a conversation in a tea house."

Victoria looked at me for a long time.

The afternoon light was coming through the window and falling across the table between us and I thought about my mother cleaning the floors of the Pierce house at six in the morning while this woman slept in an expensive bed above her. I thought about all the years my mother had moved through that house like she was trying not to take up too much space in a life that was never supposed to be hers.

I thought about Lily's parents whose car accident was not an accident at all according to what Henry had been building toward in the investigation. I thought about a five year old girl who grew up without her mother and father because this woman in a cream coat had decided they were a problem to be solved.

I did not say any of that out loud.

I did not need to.

Victoria seemed to understand that I had nothing left to say because she looked away from me and out the window again and for just a moment she looked like what she actually was, which was a woman sitting across from the consequences of everything she had spent twenty years running from.

"You are making a mistake," she said finally. Her voice was quiet now. The smooth control was still there but it was working harder than before.

"Maybe," I said. "But it is mine to make."

I stood up from the table.

I buttoned my jacket and I looked down at her one more time.

"I want you to know something," I said. "My mother was a good woman. She was a kind person who worked hard and loved her son and tried to make the best of a life that you took from her. She never knew who she was or where she came from or that her father spent years looking for her. She died without knowing any of that." I paused. "I am going to make sure the world knows what was done to her. Not because I am angry. Because she deserves to be known."

Victoria said nothing.

I turned and walked through the tea house toward the exit.

At the door I did not look back.

Outside the afternoon was cold and clear and the city was moving in all its ordinary directions around me. I walked to the car where the driver was waiting and I got in and I sat back and I closed my eyes for just one second.

My phone buzzed.

Henry.

I picked it up.

"How did it go?" he asked.

"She offered me a deal," I said. "The truth about my mother in exchange for stopping the legal case."

A short silence.

"And?" Henry said.

"I told her no," I said.

Another silence which was longer this time.

"Are you all right?" Henry asked.

I looked out the window at the city going past.

I thought about the tea house and Victoria's face when she realised the deal was not going to work. I thought about the small uncontrolled expression that had moved across her face when I told her I already had enough truth.

I thought about my mother.

"Yes," I said. "Take me home. I want to see Lily before she goes to sleep."

"She is waiting for you," Henry said. "She made you something today with Agent Yemi. I have been told very specifically that you must see it tonight and not tomorrow morning."

Something in my chest loosened just slightly.

"I am on my way," I said.

I put the phone down and watched the city go past the window and thought about how far everything had come from a park bench with one dollar in my account and nowhere to go.

Victoria Pierce had sat across from me today and offered me the most valuable thing she had left and I had said no.

Because the truth about my mother was not Victoria's to sell.

It belonged to my mother.

And I was going to give it back to her the right way.