Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 201

Chapter 201

Margaret.

Lena placed her the same moment Monica’s body went completely rigid behind her. She had seen this woman once before, briefly, across a crowded space. Blonde hair. Expensive coat. The kind of woman who moved through rooms like she owned them. She hadn’t known her name that time.

She knew it now.

Monica had stopped trying to hold herself together. She was fully behind Lena, pressed flat against her back, her bound hands gripping whatever fabric they could reach, her face hidden between Lena’s shoulder blades. The shaking coming through her was not ordinary fear. It was older than that. Deeper. The kind that lived in a person’s body long after the original wound had closed.

Lena planted her feet on the concrete floor and did not move.

Margaret stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked at them with the expression of someone who had been waiting a very long time for this exact moment. Her eyes traveled to where Monica was tucked behind Lena and something brightened in them that made Lena’s stomach go cold.

“Look at you both,” Margaret said softly. “Three days down here and still hiding behind each other.”

Lena said nothing.

“Monica.” Margaret’s voice went almost gentle. “Come out. I only want to talk.”

Monica pressed harder against Lena’s spine.

“She’s staying where she is,” Lena said.

Margaret smiled and began walking a slow circle around them, her heels clicking on the concrete in a steady, deliberate rhythm. She stopped in front of Lena and studied her face with something like curiosity.

“You’re Alexander’s daughter,” she said. “His real daughter.”

“I’m Lucia’s daughter too,” Lena said. “She’s my mother.”

Margaret tilted her head. “She’s your stepmother. There’s a difference.”

“Not in our house.”

“Your house.” Margaret’s voice took on a soft, almost sympathetic edge. “That’s what I want to talk to you about. About what that house has cost you.” She folded her arms. “You know you don’t belong here. You know this isn’t really about you. You are Alexander Kane’s biological daughter and you ended up tied up in the dark because of Lucia and her children.”

Lena kept her face still.

“Think about it carefully,” Margaret continued, her voice smooth and reasonable. “Before Lucia came into your father’s life, before she brought her revenge and her three children and their endless problems, was any of this happening? Was your life a battlefield?” She stepped slightly closer. “Lucia’s children are bad luck. They were bad luck for Marco. They were bad luck for me. And now they have dragged you into their mess because that is what they do. They pull everyone around them into their chaos and then they stand in the middle of it looking like the victims. You got caught in it. That’s the truth nobody is telling you.”

“My family didn’t drag me anywhere,” Lena said. “I chose them.”

“You chose to be tied up in a basement?”

“I chose those people.” Lena held her gaze. “Whatever comes with them, I choose them. Every time.” Margaret looked at her for a long moment. Then she raised her voice slightly, directing her words past Lena’s shoulder.

“Do you know what your mother and her lawyers and her strategy cost me, Monica? Do you know what that family’s obsession with destroying Marco cost me personally?”

Lena’s back.

“I lost my baby.” Margaret’s voice dropped, stripped of its smoothness for just a moment, showing something underneath that was real and broken and ugly with grief. “I was pregnant. And your family pushed Marco to the edge, frustrated him until he had nothing left, drove him to a point where he couldn’t control himself. And during one of those nights, when he was so consumed with rage over what your mother was doing to him, he pushed me. I fell.” She stopped. “And I lost my child. Because of what your family did to him. Because of the war your mother started.”

The basement was very quiet.

Then Monica spoke.

Her voice came from behind Lena’s back. Small at first, barely a sound, and then gathering, the way a voice did when it had been held back too long and could not stay held any longer.

“You took our dad away from us.”

Margaret went still.

“You are the reason everything broke,” Monica continued, her voice trembling but pushing forward. “You went after a married man with children. You pushed yourself into our home. You made him choose. You made him leave us.” Her breath hitched hard. “Everything you lost, everything you are blaming us for, you started. You walked into our family and burned it down. And now you want to stand here and tell me your baby died because of my mother?”

Margaret’s jaw tightened.

“Finally,” she said softly. Something almost like amusement crossed her face. “The mouse found her tongue.” “Your baby died,” Monica said.

Margaret looked at her.

“Your baby died because that child knew.” Monica’s voice cracked badly but kept going. “She knew she was coming to a bad mother. She knew what was waiting for her. And she chose not to come.”

The basement went completely silent.

The amusement drained from Margaret’s face. The smoothness went with it. What was underneath was raw and terrible and for one moment completely unguarded, grief and fury tangled together into something that had no name.

Then she moved.

She stepped around Lena in one fast motion, her hand coming across hard, and the sound of it struck the concrete walls like a thunderclap. Monica’s head snapped sideways from the force of it and the cry that came out of her was short and broken and stunned.

Lena did not think. She drove her shoulder into Margaret with everything she had. Three days of cold floors and rope burns and helplessness and fear, all of it behind one movement. Margaret staggered backward hard, her heel turning wrong on the concrete, her arms flying out. She caught herself against the far wall and stood there with her breathing coming uneven, her hair knocked loose, her coat twisted to one side.

Lena put herself back between Margaret and Monica.

“Do not touch her again.” Her voice came out in a register she did not recognise. Low and stripped of everything except the thing that lived underneath all the control. “Do not touch my sister again.”

Margaret looked at her from across the room.

She breathed. She straightened. She smoothed her coat with both hands and pushed her hair back with the deliberate composure of a woman refusing to be rattled.

“You are both going to regret this night,” she said. Her voice was completely steady, which was more frightening than screaming. “Every word that was spoken in this room. Every single thing that happened down here. You are going to regret all of it.”

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Chapter 201

She turned and walked to the stairs.

“I am going to make sure you regret being alive,” she said without turning around. Her voice was almost quiet. Almost conversational. “Both of you. Before this is over, you are going to wish you had never opened your mouths tonight.”

Her heels on the stairs. Slow and deliberate. All the way to the top.

The door shut.

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