CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX #2
I watch her expression change as she finds the inconsistencies: concentration first, followed by doubt and then recognition. When she reaches the corporate ownership chart, her fingers stop against the page.
“RTH,” she murmurs.
“Keep reading.”
Isabella finds Richard’s full name on the following page and looks up at me as though she still expects some explanation that will make the discovery less monstrous.
“Your uncle.”
“It appears so.”
The cautious wording irritates her.
“Appears?”
“I want the entire payment chain confirmed and the complete records obtained before making a formal accusation. The report is preliminary. There is enough evidence to investigate him, but not necessarily enough yet to prosecute him.”
“Do you believe he did it?”
I look at the pages.
“Yes. But what I believe cannot replace what we can prove.”
She understands why I make the distinction. Five years ago, I believed Isabella had betrayed me, and I did not require proof before condemning her.
She returns to the report and continues reading until she reaches the raw laboratory result. The color drains from her face.
“Alexander…”
“I know.”
“Your test results were altered.”
“At least two of them. The investigators are still trying to locate the original data from the first.”
She reads the conclusion silently, her lips moving over the technical terms.
“You weren’t incapable of fathering a child. Not the way they told you.”
“There was residual sperm production. The probability of natural conception was low, but it wasn’t zero.”
Isabella traces the sentence with one finger, perhaps searching for some detail she has misunderstood.
“How low?”
“The report doesn’t calculate it. It only confirms that conception was possible.”
“Possible,” she repeats, and the word seems to alter the entire room because five years ago that single possibility would have changed everything.
Isabella sinks farther into the sofa as though her legs have lost their strength.
“My God.”
I go to the water carafe on the sideboard, pour a glass, and leave it within her reach. I do not tell her to drink or use the gesture as an excuse to move closer.
“Richard knew you could have children,” she says.
“He probably knew the real results.”
“Not just knew. If he paid to have them changed, he wanted you to believe the opposite.”
“Yes.”
She turns back several pages and studies the dates again.
“Why?”
It is not a na?ve question. Isabella has already understood, but she needs to hear me say it.
“The trust. Without any descendants from me, Marcus was the expected beneficiary. The eighteen percent would remain within Richard’s branch of the family, exactly as he intended.”
Understanding appears on her face, followed by a kind of anger I have rarely seen in her. She stands with the report still in her hands.
“So Richard was behind all of it.”
The words offer an almost irresistible temptation.
Richard paid for the fraud, constructed the medical impossibility, and fed my suspicions about the hotel.
Perhaps he is also connected to the leak about our marriage and Lily’s exposure.
I could seize those facts and rearrange the entire story until I became another victim.
For one miserable second, I feel relief at the thought that if Richard did all of this, perhaps I can give him the destruction of my family too.
Perhaps I can say I was manipulated, that I acted on falsified medical evidence, and that any man in my position would have reached the same conclusion.
Then I remember Isabella holding the pregnancy test. I remember the cautious joy on her face when she told me, the fear that appeared when I did not respond, and the way she insisted there had never been another man.
She offered to have me retested, asked for a DNA test, and put every possible path to the truth in front of me.
Edmund demanded that I investigate too, and I did nothing.
“No,” I say.
Isabella frowns.
“What?”
I gesture toward the report.
“The fraud is Richard’s responsibility. If we discover that the Beaumont insinuations, the leaks, or any other manipulation came from him, those will be his responsibility too. But what I did to you is still mine.”
The anger on her face falters.
“Alexander…”
“He lied, and I believed him because there were documents that made your pregnancy seem almost impossible. But you were standing in front of me telling me the truth. Richard gave me reasons to doubt, and I turned that doubt into a verdict before I investigated anything. I refused to let you defend yourself because protecting my pride mattered more to me than discovering the truth.”
The office falls silent. Outside, I hear the distant clatter of a spoon hitting the floor and Lily calling for someone, probably the member of staff still in the kitchen. Life continues only a few yards away while this room feels trapped in a morning five years ago.
“I could have repeated the test,” I say.
“Yes.”
“You asked me to.”
“I did.”
“So did Edmund.”
Her voice lowers.
“He tried to speak to you after I left.”
“I know. I refused to listen to him.”
The admission weighs more now that I know the truth. I was not deceived because there were no alternatives; I was deceived because I accepted only the version that confirmed my fear and anger.
“I will not use Richard to wash my choices clean.”
Tears fill Isabella’s eyes.
“I wasn’t trying to absolve you.”
“I know. You were going to say the report explains what happened.”
“It explains part of it.”
“Exactly. It explains why the pregnancy seemed impossible to me, but it does not explain why I treated you as though you were guilty, and it certainly doesn’t explain why I maintained that decision for five years.”
A tear slips down her cheek. My body reacts with an immediate need to cross the room and take her into my arms, but I remain where I am. Her pain does not automatically give me the right to comfort her.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I know I’ve said it before, and I know no amount of regret changes those years. I’m still sorry.”
Isabella looks down at the laboratory conclusion again.
“I spent five years believing you chose those tests over me.”
“I did.”
“But they were false.”
“The documents were false. My choice was real.”
She covers her mouth as the first sob shakes her shoulders. It does not look like relief. It is the pain of discovering that her life could have been different, that all the destruction began with a tangible and preventable lie.
I take one step toward her and stop.
“May I come closer?”
It takes her a moment to nod.
I move slowly and sit in the armchair beside the sofa, leaving space between us. Isabella folds the report in half, hiding Richard’s name as though she cannot bear to keep looking at it.
“I knew Lily was yours,” she says after a while.
“Not only because there was no other man. When she was born, there were things—the shape of her hands, the expression she made when she was angry. Sometimes I looked at her and hated you because it felt as though part of you had stayed with me even after you were gone.”
I close my eyes for a moment.
“Would I have seen it?”
“I don’t know.”
The honesty hurts more than a cruel answer would.
“Maybe you would have. Maybe you would have searched for another explanation because you’d already decided what you believed.”
There is no defense against that.
“You’re right.”
Isabella wipes her face with the back of her hand.
“Why would Richard do this to you? You were his nephew. You trusted him.”
“For some men, family is only another structure of power. Relatives are allies for as long as they remain useful and threats the moment they stop being so.”
She gives a wet, humorless laugh.
“That is almost funny coming from a Thorne.”
“I know.”
“Did Edmund know?”
“I don’t think so. If he had, he would have acted. He tried to convince me to repeat the tests, which means he either suspected the results or, at the very least, distrusted the certainty I had built around them.”
Isabella studies the fold in the paper.
“Richard was at your house that day.”
“Yes.”
“I never understood how he got there so quickly.”
“Neither did I. I never even questioned it.”
The realization hits us at the same time.
Richard did not merely tell me that he had seen Isabella with Daniel; he was present when I accused her, when she tried to defend herself, and when she left carrying a suitcase.
He may have watched the exact consequence of something he had been preparing for years.
Anger moves through me again, this time with revulsion beneath it.
“What are you going to do?” Isabella asks.
“Investigate everything. Confirm the payments, locate the doctor responsible for the reports, and find out who else was involved. I also want a complete analysis of Richard’s connections to the Beaumont and the recent leaks.”
“You’re not confronting him?”
“Not yet.”
She knows me well enough to understand what that restraint costs.
“You want to.”
“More than anything. If he walked through that door right now, I don’t trust what I would do.”
“Then why wait?”
I look at her.
“Because five years ago I acted before I knew the whole truth. I will not make that mistake again. This time we will have documents, statements, and a sequence of events he cannot deny.”
Something changes between us. It is not reconciliation or forgiveness, but perhaps it is the first fragment of trust returned because I have finally made a different choice.
Isabella straightens her shoulders.
“I want to be part of the investigation.”
“You will be.”
“I don’t want a summary when everything is over. I want access to anything they find about me, Daniel, and the Beaumont.”
My jaw tightens at his name, an old reaction I cannot entirely erase. This time, however, I do not allow jealousy to decide anything.
“You’ll have access to all of it.”
“Even if they find something you consider painful or dangerous.”
“Yes.”
“You won’t hide information to protect me.”
“No.”
She studies me carefully, searching for some hidden qualification.