Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 277

Chapter 227

Chapter 277

Alexander was reading throng the quarterly audit when his assistant knocked with the periythm not a scheduled interruptin

He looked up

She was holding her tablet and her expression was not the usual professional neutral

“Mr. Kane, every major news station is carrying a new video from the Lowe family?

He closed the file. “Another accusation?”

She shook her head. “No, sir.” A pause. “They’re apologizing”

He looked at her for a moment. Then he stood, reached for his jacket, and salt, Cancel my next meeting

He drove home.

Lucia was in the sitting room when he came through, a book open in her lap, the particular quiet afternoon posture he had only recently been able to return to, the posture of a woman who felt safe enough to read again. She looked up when he came in and registered immediately that something had changed in the quality of the air around hin, something he was carrying.

“Please turn on the news,” he said to the butler, who moved to the television across the room.

Lucia set her book down. “What happened?”

“The Lowes,” he said.

It was enough. Her face went through several things quickly and then settled into waiting.

They came one by one, drawn by the sound of the television coming on, by the shift in the house’s atmosphere that tamales learned to read after enough time together. Lucas appeared in the doorway from the direction of the gym, and in his training clothes. Ria and Lena came downstairs together, Ría already reading something on her phone that she put face- down the moment she saw Alexander’s expression. Monica came in last and sat on the arm of the chair closest to the television, pulling her feet up, making herself small the way she did when she was preparing to receive something

The video was already running on the news channel.

Claire’s face on screen. No makeup, her hair down, the clothes of someone who had stopped caring bout presentatio

The room watched in complete silence. Nobody spoke. Nobody reached for their phonies. Even Lucas, who had been leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed from the moment he came in, uncrossed them partway throuch Claire’s statement and stood with them at his sides, listening.

Claire said: I stole David. I could not stand watching my sister be happy.

Lucia felt Alexander’s hand find hers on the couch cushion between them.

Marie said: I failed as a mother. I did not love them equally.

Josh said Monica’s name and his voice changed when he said it, and the room felt that, and nobody mavej.

When the video ended the news anchor began speaking and Alexander reached for the remote and ured the volume down and the room held the quiet of people who had just received something unexpected and had not yet decuted whin 10 da

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Chapter 277

with it.

Lucas uncrossed and recrossed his arms.

“I’m glad they finally said it, he said. His voice was controlled in the particular way it was controlled when he was managing something underneath. “I’m glad the whole country heard it.” He looked around the room. “But I don’t forgive them. Not

s controlle yet. Maybe not for a long time.” He looked at Monica directly, the specific directness he used when he was saying something he wanted witnessed. “Not after what they put through.”

Lucia looked at her son.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

He met her eyes.

“Forgiveness isn’t something people collect with one apology,” she said. “It comes when it comes. Or it doesn’t come. Both are acceptable.” She looked at the blank screen for a moment. “But what they did today took something. Standing in front of cameras that they used for months to do damage and using them instead for this.” She looked back at Lucas. “That was brave. Whatever else they are, that was brave.”

Lucas breathed in slowly. He did not agree out loud. But he did not argue either, which was its own kind of concession.

Alexander had moved to where Monica was sitting.

He sat on the edge of the chair beside the arm she had perched on, close enough that their shoulders almost touched, and he looked at her profile, at the stillness she had been carrying since the video began.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

Monica kept her eyes on the television, even though it was now showing something else.

“I still remember it,” she said. “All of it. The schoolyard. The things people said at school. The way it felt to sit in the art room and hear someone say that word about me.” She swallowed. “I don’t think that goes away because they made a video.”

Lucia reached over and took her hand.

Monica looked at their joined hands for a moment.

“But I keep thinking about something,” she said. “If the charges go forward, if the hearing happens the way it’s scheduled, Claire’s children are going to spend years without their mother around the way she should be. Josh’s baby is going to be born into that.” She looked up at Alexander. “And I don’t want that to be because of me. I don’t want to be the reason for it.” She looked at him steadily. “I think we should drop the charges.”

The room was completely silent.

Alexander studied his daughter’s face for a long time.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because they told the truth,” Monica said. “Publicly, where they couldn’t take it back. That’s what we always wanted. For the truth to be out there.” She shook her head slightly. “I don’t forgive them. I want to be clear about that. Maybe one day. Maybe never. But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life watching more children grow up paying for what the adults around them did.”

Lucia’s eyes were bright.

Alexander was quiet for a moment. Then he looked around the room at all of them.

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11:38 am

Chapter 227

want to say something,” he said. “I should have said it before” He leaned forward slightly. “I never wanted this family prison. That was never the actual goal” He looked at Lucas, who was watching him carefully. “I wanted them to step. 7 wanted consequences that would make people think twice before doing what they did to this family, Prison was a mechanism for that, not the end I was working toward.” He paused. “Monica has said what I couldn’t find a way to way myself.”

Lucia squeezed his hand.

The sitting room held them all for a quiet moment, six people on the other side of something enormous, the particular stillness of a family that had just collectively exhaled.

Then Lena shifted where she was sitting and looked at the room with an expression that had been building for several minutes and had finally arrived at whatever it had been building toward.

“Can we please talk about something else now?” she said.

Everyone looked at her.

She looked at Lucia. Then at Alexander. Then back at the room.

“I think this house needs a baby,” she said.

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Lucas made a sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh.

Ria turned to look at her sister with the expression of someone who had absolutely been thinking the same thing but had not said it.

“She’s not wrong,” Ria said.

Monica sat up straighter. “I’ve always wanted a little one in this house. I’d help look after it. I’m very responsible.” She looked at Lucia with the particular brightness she brought to things she genuinely meant. “I would be an excellent older sister?

Lucas put his head in both hands.

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