Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 231

Chapter 231

Chapter 231

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Marie arrived with Claire on a Thursday afternoon, the first visit from her mother since the sentencing. Margaret had not expected her. The guard who told her she had visitors had said two names and Margaret had sat in her cell for the ten minutes before they brought her down trying to understand why her mother would come now, after everything, after the silence that had stretched since the trial.

The visiting room had not changed. Same nameless paint on the walls, same plastic chairs bolted to the floor. Marie sat down across from her looking older than Margaret remembered, her hair greyer, her hands folded carefully on the table the way she had always held them when she was managing something difficult.

Claire sat beside her. She did not look at Margaret directly at first.

“You look thin,” Marie said.

“The food here isn’t good,” Margaret said.

Marie’s face did something that might have been sympathy. “I have thought about you,” she said. Her voice was careful, almost gentle, in a register Margaret had not heard from her in years. “I know what you did was wrong. You went too far. You know that, I assume.”

“I know it,” Margaret said quietly. “Every day. I think about it every single day.” She looked at her mother’s hands on the table. “I wish I could turn back the clock. I wish I had stopped before any of it happened. I would give anything to undo what I did.”

Marie nodded slowly, as if this was the correct answer and she was satisfied to hear it. Then her expression shifted, the gentleness folding away into something more practical.

“We need to talk about something serious,” she said. “The family is having financial difficulties. Josh’s business has not been doing well this year. He took out loans against the projections and the projections did not hold. And his wife is pregnant now. Their first child.” She paused. “We need to discuss what is available to help.”

Margaret felt something in her chest go cold and still.

“I don’t have money,” she said. The moment the words left her mouth she felt the weight of repeating them, the same sentence she had said to her father weeks ago when she genuinely had nothing decided yet.

Marie’s eyebrows drew together slightly. “What about your properties? The apartment in Manhattan. Your jewellery. The investment accounts you had before all of this?”

“Gone,” Margaret said. “All of it. There’s nothing left.”

The room was quiet for a moment.

Claire finally looked at her sister directly. “What do you mean gone?”

“I gave it away.”

Claire’s expression shifted into something sharper. “Gave it away to who? When? You never told us any of this.”

“Marco left me fifty million dollars privately, outside the will,” Margaret said. “I only learned about it the day after Dad and Josh came to see me. When Dad called me useless and walked out, I had nothing decided yet. There was nothing to tell him because there was nothing to tell.”

Claire’s jaw tightened. “So you found out the next day and said nothing to any of us since.”

“I had to decide what to do with it,” Margaret said. “I decided alone.”

“Where is the money now?” Claire’s voice had gone flat and dangerous.

Margaret looked at her sister. At her mother. At the two faces across the table waiting for an answer they would not like.

“I gave it to Monica,” she said.

The room went very still.

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Chapter 231

“You gave it to Monica Marie’s voice was flat with disbelief Marce’s daughter The Shild.

“Yes”

“All of it?

“All of it Sixty-four million. The fifty from Marco and everything I had personally. The anatimuat th Investments. All of it transferred directly to her

Claire’s hand came down on the table hard enough that the sound carried in the quiet room. Why do that? Why would you hand that kind of money to the one family that already has more than they

“Because I hurt her the most Margaret’s voice cracked slightly and she let it “She was thirteen years old: i pa her in a basement for six days. I bruised her face with my own hand. I held a gun on her and her father died trying to put his body between us.” Her throat tightened. She is in therapy now because of what I did to her That money will help with whatever she needs for the rest of her life because of what I took”

“She doesn’t need it,” Claire said, and now something ugly had entered her voice, something that had been sitting underneath everything she’d said until now. “That spoiled little brat doesn’t need a single dollar of it Her mother runs an empire. Her stepfather could buy this entire prison and not feel it. Marco already left her millions. And you handed her sixty-four more because you feel sorry for her?”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” Margaret said.

“Why not?” Claire leaned forward, her voice rising, cruel now and unguarded. “She is exactly the kind of child who never has to want for anything in her life. She gets everything handed to her, including blood money from a woman who killed her own father. She probably doesn’t even know what it feels like to need money the way Josh’s child is going to need it. She’ll never know hunger. She’ll never know watching her parents argue about bills at the kitchen table.” Claire’s eyes were bright with anger. “And you chose her. You chose that pampered little princess over your own blood.”

“She is not pampered,” Margaret said, her voice shaking now too. “She sat in a witness box at thirteen and told a courtroom how she held her father’s hand while he died. She has nightmares about drowning because of what I did to her. Don’t you dare call her spoiled in front of me.”

“I’ll call her whatever I want,” Claire said. “She is a stranger’s daughter who took something that should belong to this family. Your family. The people who actually love you.”

“You don’t love me,” Margaret said quietly. “You came here to ask for money you assumed I had. The moment you found out I didn’t, this became about Monica instead of me.”

“This is about all of it,” Marie cut in, her voice shaking with fury now. “Your own family is struggling and you handed everything to a girl who will never understand what struggling means. Have we not suffered enough because of what you did? Now we suffer financially too, watching you give away a fortune to people who don’t even need it?”

“I am not doing anything to you,” Margaret said. “I am doing something for the only person whose life l actually destroyed.”

Claire stood up so fast her chair scraped hard against the floor. “We will get that money back,” she said. ” Every penny of it. That spoiled child does not get to keep money that belongs to this family. We will find a lawyer. We will challenge the transfer. We will take it back from her if it’s the last thing we do.”

“It is not yours,” Margaret said. Her voice had gone very quiet and very certain. “It was mine. I decided what happened to it.”

“You are a convicted murderer,” Claire said, leaning over the table now, her voice low and vicious. “You have no rights left to decide anything. We are taking that money back from that girl whether you like it or not.”

“Don’t you dare go near her.” Something in Margaret’s voice had changed completely, gone sharp and protective in a way that surprised even herself. “Haven’t you taken enough from that family already? Haven’t I?”

“You don’t get to protect anyone anymore,” Claire said. “You lost that right when you put a gun in a basement. and pointed it at a child.”

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D

Chapter 231

Marie stood up beside her daughter. She looked at Margaret for a long moment, something complicated moving across her face, quef and fury and something older underneath both.

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