Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 243

Chapter 244–

Chapter 243

The press conference was Changes down to the love dorsall

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She had booked the room in a mid-range hotel near the city center, notting expensive because they could not afford expensive, but respectable enough that the cameras would not make look cheap. Two rows of chairs for the journalists table at the front with a white tablecloth, three ter gasses, a small cluster of microphones borrowed from a contact josh Junior had found through someone he used to do business with. A printed banner befand the table, plain white with black text JUSTICE FOR THE LOWES FAMILY

Josh Junior had spent the two days before the conference calling every tabloid, every news outler, every online publication he could reach. Most of them did not call back. Two did. One of those two sent a journalist and a photographer. The other sent a blogger who covered legal scandals and ran a channel with enough followers to matter

It was not the coverage Claire had imagined when the first proposed the idea

But it was something

They arrived at the hotel at nine in the morning, the four of them, Marie smoothing her coat on the way through the lobby, Josh Senior walking with his chin up, Claire carrying the folder of documents she had assembled over the previous week. Josh junior checking his phone every thirty seconds.

Stella had not come.

Josh had told her about the conference three days ago, sitting at the kitchen table, laying it out as a fait accompli rather than something that required her agreement. Stella had looked at him for a long moment without speaking. Then she had stood up from the table and walked upstairs and the bedroom door had closed and she had not come back down for dinner

Nobody mentioned her absence in the hotel lobby

They sat at the table at ten minutes past nine. The journalist from the tabloid was already there, notebook open, the photographer beside him with his camera resting in his lap. The legal scandal blogger was at the end of the front row with a phone propped up on a small tripod, already recording

Marie looked at the phone on the tripod and smoothed her coat again.

Claire leaned toward the cluster of microphones.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. Her voice was composed. She had practiced this in front of the bathroom maror the night before, not the words exactly but the tone, the specific register of controlled grief rather than anger, because grief was sympathetic and anger was not. “We are the family of Margaret Hart, who is currently serving a cinence. We are here today because we believe the public deserves to know the full story behind the events that led to her imprisonment, and behind the financial decisions that have left our family without any support whatsoev

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