Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 208

Chapter 208

“I’ve got you.” Her voice came out barely a sound. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Monica did not lift her head. She pressed harder against her father’s chest.

“He saved me, Mum.” Her voice came out broken and small and direct, like she needed Lucia to understand this specific fact above all others. “He came for me and he saved me.”

Lucia held her tighter.

Alexander was on the other side of the room. She heard his voice before she could see through her own tears, heard him saying Lena’s name, heard Lena saying Dad in a voice that cracked completely on the single syllable. She heard the sound of him pulling his daughter in, heard Lena finally stop being the person holding everything together because someone else was there to do it now.

The paramedics came down the stairs behind them.

One of them knelt beside Marco. Checked. Looked up at his colleague. A small, almost invisible shake of the head that Lucia saw from across the room and felt like something physical.

Gone. Already gone.

“Ma’am.” A gentle hand on her shoulder. “We need to assess your daughter.”

Lucia loosened her hold on Monica only enough for the paramedic to check her. She did not let go entirely. She could not.

From behind her came the sound of handcuffs and Margaret’s voice beginning.

“I didn’t want this.” Margaret’s voice climbed as the officers pulled her to her feet. “I didn’t want any of this to end like this. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t supposed to get in the way.”

Nobody responded.

“She drove him to this.” Margaret’s voice was rising toward something that didn’t sound entirely like a person anymore. “Lucia destroyed his life. She destroyed our marriage. She turned his own children against him and he was so broken and desperate that he followed me here and put himself in front of a gun.” Her voice broke on the last word and then kept going. “That is on her. That is Lucia’s fault.”

One of the officers took her arm toward the stairs.

Margaret pulled against it. Her eyes found Lucia across the room.

“You did this.” Her voice came out shaking and certain. “Every single thing that happened in this room is because of you. Your revenge. Your need to take everything. You broke him. I just finished it.”

“Margaret Hart.” An officer’s voice, flat and professional. “You are under arrest for kidnapping, assault, and the murder of Marco Hart. You have the right to remain silent.”

“He was my husband.” Her voice cracked through the words. “He was my husband and I loved him and she took him from me the same way she took everything. Look at what she made me do.”

They got her to the stairs. Her voice kept coming down from above as they moved her through the building, growing fainter as distance took it. Still blaming. Still insisting. Still building the story she needed to survive what she had done.

Then she was gone.

The basement went quiet.

Monica had finally lifted her head from Marco’s chest. She was looking at his face with an expression that was too complicated and too complete for any description to hold. Her cheek was still bruised. Her wrists were raw. Her hair was matted. She looked like six days of everything. And she was looking at her father’s face with an expression that said she was memorising it.

“He smiled at me,” Monica said to no one in particular. Her voice was almost steady. “Before he went. He found his smile.”

Lucia pressed her lips to her daughter’s hair and could not speak.

On the other side of the room Alexander sat on the concrete floor with Lena in his arms, his chin on her head,

312

Five days.

Alexander stood at the window of the sitting room and looked at the garden without seeing it. Five days si Monica and Lena had walked out of the house with shopping bags and bodyguards and come home to nobody. Five days of FBI agents in his study, phones ringing at all hours, leads dissolving into dead ends, resources deployed across the city that had found nothing except an empty warehouse and a television

screen.

Five days and his daughters were still gone.

Behind him, the room was full of people who were trying. Agents with laptops open on the coffee table. David coordinating with investigators on his phone in the corner. Two detectives from the precinct sitting across from each other with files spread between them.

All of it producing nothing.

Alexander turned from the window and looked at Lucia.

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