Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 204

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Chapter 204

Chapter 204

The security camera showed Marco Hart standing at the gate.

Alexander saw it first, on the monitor in the hallway, and stood there for a moment just looking at the man on the screen. Marco was alone. No lawyer. No driver. He’d come in his own car and parked it on the street and walked to the gate himself, which meant he’d chosen to come without witnesses.

“No.” Lucia’s voice came from behind Alexander before he even turned around. She was in the doorway of the sitting room, still in yesterday’s clothes, her eyes red and her face carrying four days of grief like a physical weight. She had seen the monitor. “No. He is not coming in here.”

“Lucia-”

“He could have arranged this.” Her voice cracked on the words. “He hired a man to find our address. He knew which mall they were at before I told him. I am not letting him walk into this house.”

“He’s Monica’s father,” Alexander said quietly.

“Monica is in a basement somewhere with rope around her wrists.” Lucia stepped forward. “Because of something connected to him. You don’t know that he didn’t arrange it.”

“You’re right.” Alexander turned to face her fully. “I don’t know that. But I also don’t know that he did. And if there is any part of what Ria and Lucas told us from their visit that is true, if there is any chance he genuinely wants to help, then turning him away tonight costs us something we cannot afford to lose.”

Lucia looked at the monitor. At Marco standing at the gate in the dark.

She closed her eyes for a moment. Then she nodded once, tight and unwilling.

Alexander buzzed the gate open.

Marco walked into the house looking like a man who had not slept in four days, which was probably true. His suit was wrong, not quite fitting the way it used to, like he’d lost weight recently that his clothes hadn’t adjusted to. He stopped in the entryway when he saw Lucia standing at the end of the hall and something moved across his face that was not performance.

Lucia crossed her arms and said nothing.

“I know you don’t want me here.” Marco’s voice came out rough. “I know you think I had something to do with this. I’m not going to try to convince you I’m a good person or that I deserve to be standing in this house.” He stopped. “But I need to say something and I need you to actually hear it.”

“Then say it,” Lucia said.

“I have been a bad husband.” The words came out without preamble, without the careful framing she would have expected from him. “I have been a bad father. I know what I did to this family and I know there is no version of an apology that touches it.” His jaw worked. “But I am not someone who tortures children. I am not someone who ties a thirteen-year-old girl to a chair and leaves her there for four days.” His voice cracked on the number. “Four days, Lucia. Monica has been in that place for four days.”

“I know how long it has been,” Lucia said quietly.

“She has a condition.” Marco took a step forward. “You know it and I know it and we both know what happens to her when she is overwhelmed with fear for too long. What she does to herself.” His eyes were red and direct and not looking away. “I am her father. Whatever else I have been, I am her father and I know her. And I am telling you that every hour she spends in that place is another hour she is fighting something inside herself that she has been working for a year to learn to control.”

The hallway was completely silent.

Lucia’s throat moved. She kept her face still but her arms had loosened slightly from where they were crossed. “I came to help,” Marco said. “I have contacts that your investigators don’t. People who operate in spaces that the police don’t reach. I have already started making calls. I want to bring them home.” He looked at Alexander

want them home.” then, directly, for the first time. “Both of them, Dae

Successfully unlocked!

Chapter 204

Alexander held his gaze for a moment. Then he stepped back and gestured toward the sitting room.

“Come in,” he said.

Lucia turned and walked ahead of them both without speaking. But she didn’t leave.

Marco came home at half past ten to find every light in the living room on and Margaret on the couch with a glass of red wine and the television running something she wasn’t watching.

She looked up when he walked in. Her eyes moved over him the way they did when she was calculating something.

“Where have you been?” Her voice came out light. Too light.

“Lucia’s.” He set his keys on the table by the door. “I went to offer help with the investigation.”

Something shifted in Margaret’s expression. She took a slow sip of wine. “You went to help Lucia find her children.”

“To help find Monica,” Marco said. “Monica is my child.”

“Monica is Lucia’s weapon.” Margaret set the glass down on the coffee table. “She always has been. All three of those children are. And Lucia has been using them to pull you back in for months.” Her voice stayed smooth and reasonable. “She doesn’t need your help, Marco. She has Alexander Kane and all his billions doing the searching. What she needs is for you to come running every time something goes wrong so she can keep you close and keep you soft.”

“Two children are missing.” Marco’s voice came out harder than he intended. “One of them is mine. That is not a strategy. That is real.”

“They were taken on Alexander’s watch.” Margaret looked at him steadily. “His security failed. His people lost them in sixty seconds. And now you’re over there holding Lucia’s hand while he stands in the background pretending it’s not his fault.” She tilted her head. “She took your children from you, Marco. She turned them against you. She brought that man into their lives to replace you. And now she wants your help?”

“Margaret.” His voice went quiet. “Did you have anything to do with this?”

The room went very still.

Margaret looked at him. Her expression did not flicker. It stayed exactly where it was, steady and smooth and deliberately unrevealing, which told him more than any flicker would have.

“How dare you.” Her voice came out low. “How dare you stand in this house and ask me that question. I lost my baby, Marco. I lost our child. Do you think I would do to someone else’s children what was done to me? Do you think I am capable of that?”

“I think you’ve been in a great deal of pain,” Marco said carefully. “And I think pain changes what a person believes they’re capable of.”

“I hate Lucia.” Margaret stood up from the couch, her wine glass left behind. “I will not pretend otherwise. I think she is calculating and cruel and she has destroyed this marriage slowly and deliberately. And yes, her children have been part of that, whether they knew it or not.” Her voice stayed controlled. “But I would not take children. I would not put children in a room somewhere and leave them there. Whatever you think of me, I am not that person.”

Marco looked at her face for a long time.

She held his gaze without blinking.

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