Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 211

Chapter 211

Chapter 211

The visiting room smelled of industrial cleaner and stale air. Fluorescent light buzzed overhead, cold and flat, the kind of light that made everything look worse than it was. Two plastic chairs faced each other across a scratched table. A guard stood near the door with his arms folded, looking at nothing.

Lucia sat down and waited.

She had not planned to come here. She had told herself she would not, that there was nothing useful in it, that the woman behind that door had taken six days from her children and killed the father of three of them and there was nothing left to say. She had told herself this every day for four days.

And then this morning she had gotten in the car..

She needed to look at her. That was the truth she had been avoiding. She needed to sit across from Margaret and see what was left.

The door opened.

Margaret came through it in prison clothes, no makeup, her blonde hair pulled back flat against her head. She looked smaller. Not physically smaller but smaller in the way people became smaller when the structures they had been holding themselves up with were removed. The coat was gone. The bracelet was gone. The carefully maintained surface of her, all of it stripped away, and what was underneath was a woman who had not slept properly and who carried something in her face that had not been there before.

She stopped when she saw Lucia. Something moved through her expression. Then she sat down.

For a moment neither of them spoke.

“Where is Marco?” Margaret’s voice came out careful. Like she was asking a question she already knew the shape of the answer to and was trying to prepare herself for the weight of it.

Lucia looked at her directly. “He died in that basement. The paramedics confirmed it before they moved him.”

The silence that followed was complete.

Margaret’s face did not crumple. It went somewhere else. Something behind her eyes extinguished, slowly, like a light being turned down rather than off. Her hands, flat on the table, pressed harder against the surface until her knuckles whitened.

“No.” Her voice came out barely above sound.

“Yes.”

“No.” Louder now. “No. He was supposed to come after me. He was supposed to be angry and we were supposed to fight and then he was supposed to come home.” Her voice was climbing. “He was not supposed to die. He was not supposed to die in that basement. That was not the plan.”

“He threw himself in front of Monica,” Lucia said. “That was the plan he chose.”

Margaret’s chair scraped back. The guard at the door straightened.

“Because of you.” Her voice cracked open. “Because you raised those children to be the most important thing in his life and then you used that against him. You made him into someone who would walk into a burning building for them and then you put a burning building in his path.” Her hands were shaking on the table. “He is dead because of you. Because of your children. Because you could not let him go, could not let him have something of his own without destroying it.”

“I didn’t destroy your marriage,” Lucia said. Her voice stayed level. “You walked into mine.”

“He came to me.” Margaret’s voice rose. “He chose me. He was unhappy and he came to me and I gave him everything I had and you spent two years making sure he paid for it.” Her eyes were bright and wet but the tears were not falling. They were staying, held back by something harder underneath. “All I wanted was for him to love me. That was all I ever wanted. To have a husband who chose me and to live quietly and to have a family.” Her voice broke on the last word. “That was all I wanted. And you took it all away because you could not stand that he chose something else.”

“You are in a prison cell because you kidnapped two children,” Lucia said. “You are in a prison cell because you spent weeks watching my family and planning an abduction and buying equipment to hurt teenagers in a basement. You are in a prison cell because Marco followed you there and stood in front of his daughter and you shot him.” Her voice did not rise. “I did not put you here. You put yourself here.”

“You put me here the day you decided that taking his company wasn’t enough.” Margaret’s voice had gone past grief into something raw and fixed. “The day you decided that humiliating him in front of everyone wasn’t enough. The day you kept going and going until there was nothing left for him except rage and desperation.” Her eyes locked onto Lucia’s. “Marco

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Chapter 211

was angry when he pushed me down those stairs. Do you know why he was so angry? Because of you. Because of what you were doing to him. My baby died because of the war you started.”

“Marco pushed you,” Lucia said. “Not me.”

“Because you drove him to it.” Margaret’s voice was shaking hard now. “You want to sit there and tell me I caused everything? You caused him. You caused the man he became when you stripped everything from him piece by piece and called it justice.” She leaned forward. “My baby is gone. My husband is dead. I have nothing. And you are going to walk out of this room and go home to your children and your billionaire and your beautiful house and nothing is going to touch you.” “My daughter sat in a cold basement for six days,” Lucia said quietly. “My daughter held her father while he died in front of her. She is thirteen years old and she wakes up screaming because she dreams about you drowning her.” She looked at Margaret steadily. “Something has already touched me. It touched all of us. And it will keep touching us for years.”

Margaret stared at her.

“I loved him,” she said. The rage had gone somewhere deeper, replaced by something more direct and more terrible. “I loved Marco Hart. Whatever you think of me, whatever I did, I loved him. And he is dead and I will never see him again and that is, what I am living with every minute in this room.”

“And Monica is living with watching him fall,” Lucia said. “So are Ria and Lucas.”

“Don’t.” Margaret’s voice sharpened. “Don’t use them against me. Don’t sit there and use his children like weapons.” “I’m not using them. They exist. They are real. They were in that basement and they loved their father and he died in front of one of them.” Lucia stood up. “You will spend the rest of your life in this room, Margaret. And Marco will spend the rest of time in the ground. And none of the people in this story who did not ask to be in it will ever fully recover.” She pushed her chair back. “That is what you caused.”

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