Chapter 14: Residual Facts
Occasionally a fragment of information reached me through ordinary professional channels—someone mentioning a name, a closed project, a reduced circumstance.
I did not seek confirmation. The relevant facts had already been established in the first months: the ownership they never verified, the capital they never controlled, the infertility that arrived in the same call as the miscarriage, and the text that closed communication. Those facts did not need refreshing.
Victoria’s version of events—accident, drama, ungrateful wife—had failed to outrun the documents. Dominic’s attempt to rebuild a narrative of betrayal had met the same wall. I remained the person who had signed, frozen, and left. They remained the people who had pushed and then discovered what silence had been covering.
