Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 207

Chapter 207

Chapter 207

The basement door opened.

Margaret came down carrying the black bag, her heels on the wooden stairs, unhurried. She set the bag on the concrete and looked at them both with the expression of someone who had already made peace with what she was about to do.

Monica was curled on the floor, knees to her chest, arms around herself. Five days had done something to her The girl who had stood up two nights ago and said the worst possible thing to Margaret’s face, she was still in there somewhere, but buried deep now under cold and hunger and darkness and the specific terror of knowing something was coming without knowing exactly when.

The rocking had started again. She didn’t know she was doing it.

“Good morning, girls,” Margaret said, her voice carrying that terrible sweetness. “I hope you rested. We have things to do today.”

Lena pressed herself upright against the wall. “What’s in the bag?”

“Practical things.” Margaret unzipped it slowly. She reached in and set down pliers. A lighter. Then a gun. She left her hand resting near the gun. “Marco and I are leaving the country tomorrow. Our flights are booked. The accounts have been arranged.” She looked at them both. “The problem is that you’ve seen my face. You know my voice. Monica has known me since before Marco and I were even married. I can’t take that with me.”

Monica made a small broken sound.

“Please what ever our mom and Dad did to you, forgive us and let us go.” Lena pleaded.

“Please.” Monica’s voice came from the floor, barely sound at all. “I want to go home. I want my mum. I want my dad.”

Margaret looked at Monica for a long moment. Then she picked up the gun.

The door at the top of the stairs burst open.

Heavy footsteps came down fast, two at a time, and Marco appeared at the bottom of the stairs breathing hard, like a man who had been sitting in a car outside working up the nerve to come in and had finally run out

of time to wait.

He stopped.

He looked at the pliers on the concrete. The lighter. He looked at Lena against the wall, her wrists raw, her eyes wide. He looked at Monica on the floor, curled around herself, rocking.

Then he looked at the gun in his wife’s hand.

His face did something that would have been impossible to look at directly. His fist came up to his mouth and pressed there for one second. Then he lowered it.

“How did you find me?” Margaret’s voice was sharp.

“I put a tracker on your car this morning.” His voice came out rough. “When you wouldn’t say Monica’s name. When I realized you talked around her like she wasn’t real to you.” He stepped off the last stair onto the basement floor. “I drove behind you tonight with my lights off. I’ve been sitting outside for forty minutes trying to decide whether I was wrong about you.”

He looked around the basement. At the tools on the concrete. At both girls.

“I wasn’t wrong.”

“Marco.” Margaret’s voice went careful and soft. “This is almost finished. I’m doing this for us. For our future. We can’t have them talking when we leave.”

“You took my daughter.” His voice cracked on the word. “You planned this. You hired people and staged a fire alarm and took Monica and Lena out of a shopping center, and I sat in my house for five days going over every conversation we’d had trying to dec

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Chapter 207

“I did it for us,” Margaret repeated.

“You did it because you are in pain,” Marco said. “Real pain. I know that. I pushed you down those stairs and will carry that for the rest of my life. The baby is on me.” His voice shook, “But Monica had nothing to do wit that. She was thirteen years old when I first brought you home. She was a child who had already been through more than any child should survive, and I moved a stranger into her life after months and told myself it would

work out.”

“Marco….”

“I made a selfish choice.” His voice rose. “I married you after knowing you for just two years because I was running from everything I’d broken and I wanted to believe I could start over. And I moved you into the lives of my children who were still healing and I told myself it was fine.” He took a step toward her. “Every single thing that happened after that is because of the choice I made. Not Lucia’s. Not my children’s. Mine.”

“Your children betrayed you,” Margaret said. “They chose her over you.”

“They chose safety.” His voice broke open. “They chose a house where they weren’t afraid. That’s what children do, Margaret. They go where they feel safe.” He looked at Monica on the floor, and the expression on his face was the kind of thing a person spent years running from feeling. “And I made our house a place they needed to escape from.”

“Stop talking like that.” Margaret’s voice went cold. “Stop making yourself the villain. Lucia manipulated everything. She poisoned them against you.”

“Lucia raised my children while I was gone.” He stepped closer. “That is what she did. She raised them and she protected them and she loved them while I was here choosing other things.” His eyes did not leave Monica. “1 chose wrong. I chose wrong every chance I had and my children paid for it.”

Margaret raised the gun.

She pointed it at Monica.

“Then maybe,” she said quietly, “they should pay for it properly.”

Marco moved.

He crossed the space and threw himself between the gun and his daughter, his back to Margaret, his arms out. The shot cracked through the basement like the world splitting in half.

Marco lurched forward one step and then went down hard onto the concrete.

Monica screamed. She threw herself across the floor to him, rope burning, knees scraping, and pressed both hands to his chest before she had thought about doing it. She pressed her palms flat against him and looked

at his face.

His eyes were open. He was looking at her.

“Monica.” Her name in his mouth sounded like he had been saving it.

“Dad.” The word broke coming out of her. “Dad, no. Stay here. Look at me. Stay here.”

“I’m sorry.” His voice was thinning but still there, still fighting its way up to reach her. “For bringing her into your lives. For choosing badly. For every month I let things happen that I should have stopped.” His hand found hers on the floor. “I’m sorry for every time you needed me and I wasn’t there.”

“Stop.” She was crying so hard she could barely see him. “Stop saying sorry and just stay. Please just stay.”

“Tell Ria and Lucas.” He was getting quieter. “Tell them I know why they made the choices they made. I understand.” A slow breath. “Tell your mother. Tell her I’m sorry. I loved her. I loved her badly and I ruined it and I loved her.”

“You’re going to tell them yourself.” Monica pressed his hand between both of hers, gripping hard. “You’re going to go home and tell them. Dad, please.”

“I love you.” Simple. No performance. Just the true thing underneath everything. “I love you, Monica. I love Ria and Lucas. I’m sorry I was so late to say it properly.”

Chapter 207

“I forgive you.” The words came out of her chest like something had been holding them too long. “I forgive you.

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