Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 203

Chapter 203

Margaret came back before dawn.

Lena heard her on the stairs before she saw the light. The same careful, deliberate steps from last time. Unhurried. Like someone who had all the time in the world and knew it.

Monica stirred against Lena’s shoulder. Her cheek was still swollen from the slap, the bruise having deepened overnight into something purple and ugly. She had finally fallen asleep a few hours ago, exhaustion overcoming terror, and now she came awake slowly with the confused eyes of someone hoping to find themselves somewhere else.

She looked at the stairs. The hope left her face.

Margaret descended into the basement wearing the same expensive coat, her hair freshly done, makeup applied like she was going somewhere important. She was carrying a phone in one hand and a small black bag in the other that she set down on the floor without explaining.

She looked at them both for a moment. Then her eyes settled on Monica’s bruised cheek and something moved through her face that was not quite guilt and not quite satisfaction. Something between the two that was worse than either.

“You look terrible,” Margaret said pleasantly. “Both of you.”

Lena said nothing.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said last night.” Margaret moved to the center of the room, unhurried, looking around the basement like she was inspecting a property she owned. “About my baby knowing what kind of mother I would be.” She turned to face Monica directly. “That was a cruel thing to say. A very cruel thing.”

“You slapped a thirteen-year-old girl for saying it,” Lena said flatly.

“Yes.” Margaret agreed without any visible shame. “I did.” She looked at Monica. “But you started something last night that we’re going to finish today. Because I think you need to understand something properly. I think you’ve been fed a version of events that leaves out the most important parts.”

Monica looked at her from beneath her swollen cheek and said nothing. But her jaw was set.

“Your mother destroyed my life,” Margaret said. Her voice came out almost conversational, like she was discussing the weather. “Not by accident. Not as a side effect of something else she was doing. Deliberately. Systematically. She came after Marco’s company. She used Alexander’s money to dismantle everything Marco had built over seventeen years. She turned his own children into weapons against him.” Her eyes moved between them. “You kids stood in front of cameras and told the world your father was a monster. You helped her take everything.”

“He hit Lucas,” Monica said. Her voice was quieter than last night but still there. “He stood by while you made our lives miserable. We didn’t make that up for cameras.”

“You exaggerated.” Margaret’s voice stayed smooth. “You dramatized a complicated situation to make yourselves look like victims and your father look like a criminal. And it worked. It ruined him.” She folded her arms. “Do you know what that did to our marriage? Do you know what it did to Marco, watching his own children testify against him? Watching Lucia and Alexander dismantle everything he’d worked for? He stopped sleeping. He stopped eating properly. He was consumed by it. Obsessed. Angry all the time.” Her voice dropped. “And one night, in the middle of one of those arguments that your family had pushed him into, he pushed me. And I fell. And I lost my child.”

“That’s not our fault,” Monica said.

“It is entirely your fault.” Margaret’s composure cracked for just a moment, something hot and raw surfacing before she pushed it back down. “Every choice your mother made, every legal move, every public humiliation she put Marco through, it fed the fire that was burning him alive. You children poured fuel on it. And I paid the price.”

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Chapter 203

“You poured the first fuel,” Monica said. Her voice was shaking but her eyes were steady. “You walked into our parents’ marriage. You went after a man with three children who had a wife who loved him. You made him choose. And when he chose you, everything started falling apart.” She stopped to breathe. “My mother didn’t destroy your life, Margaret. You walked into hers and took what you wanted and then you’re angry that she fought back.”

Margaret stared at her.

“You sound exactly like her,” she said quietly. “Like Lucia. The same words. The same certainty. She trained you well.”

“Nobody trained me,” Monica said. “I just watched what happened. I was there.”

Margaret looked at her for a long moment. Then she picked up the phone from where she’d set it. She turned the screen toward them.

Lucia was on it.

The footage was from the warehouse. Last night. Lucia pressing her hand flat against the television screen, against the image of Lena’s face, her own face completely undone, her voice barely making sound as she said their names. Then the camera caught her from behind, Alexander’s arms around her, her body folded into his, shaking with the kind of crying that had no dignity left in it.

Lena’s chest went tight.

Watching her mother not know she was being watched. Watching her mother fall apart in an empty warehouse at three in the morning pressing her hand to a screen. Lena felt something rise in her throat that she forced back down.

“She loves you,” Margaret said. Her voice had gone strange. Soft and almost gentle, which made it worse. That’s very clear. It must be beautiful, having a mother who loves you that much.” She turned the phone around and looked at the footage herself for a moment. “I was going to have that. I was going to be someone’ s mother. I had names picked out. I had a room planned.” Her voice went flat. “Your family took that from me.”

“You took it from yourself,” Monica said. Her voice broke on the last word but it came out anyway.

Margaret turned the phone back toward them and turned up the volume.

Lucia’s voice filled the basement. Saying their names. Saying she was coming. The raw, destroyed sound of a mother who did not know where her children were.

“Listen,” Margaret said. “I want you to hear it properly.”

Monica turned her face away. Tears were running down the unbrushed side of her cheek, the one that wasn’t bruised. Lena kept her eyes forward and her jaw locked and refused to let Margaret see what hearing her mother’s voice in this room was doing to her inside.

“This is what it feels like,” Margaret said over the sound of Lucia crying. “This is what I felt when I woke up in that hospital and they told me my baby was gone. This exact feeling. Except there was no one coming for me. No Alexander holding me. No children to fight for.” She turned the phone off. The basement went quiet. “Now you understand why you’re here.”

“I understand that you’re sick,” Monica said. Her voice was completely stripped. “I understand that you lost something real and it broke something in you that hasn’t healed. But that doesn’t make this right. We are children. We did not take your baby. We cannot give her back. And hurting us will not bring her back.” “No,” Margaret agreed. She picked up the small black bag from the floor. “It won’t.” She looked at them both with an expression that had moved somewhere past reason. Past grief. Past anything that could be reached or reasoned with. “But it will make your mother understand what loss actually costs.”

She walked to the stairs.

“I’m going to get some things,” she said without turning around. “When I come back, we’re going to have a very different kind of conversation. The kind that leaves marks.”

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