Chương 8
Not completely.
Not enough to forgive him.
But enough to understand something important.
My family had not been a house built around one lie.
It had been a house built around many people protecting different pieces of the truth.
And now those pieces were finally colliding.
I left the office carrying more questions than answers.
That had become the strange pattern of my life.
Every time I found the truth, it created another door.
Every door led somewhere I did not want to go.
I sat in my car outside the building for nearly twenty minutes.
The engine was off.
The air conditioner had stopped.
The windshield slowly collected dust from the city traffic around me.
I should have been angry.
I was angry.
But underneath that was something else.
Grief.
Not for the father I had lost.
I had already lost him years ago.
For the father I had never actually had.
The hardest part was realizing that some of my memories were not completely false.
They were just incomplete.
There had been moments when Victor Prescott brought me ice cream after school.
Moments when he fixed my bicycle chain in the driveway.
Moments when he sat beside my bed during thunderstorms.
I had spent years telling myself those moments did not matter because they were surrounded by everything else.
But they did matter.
That was the cruel part.
People could hurt you and still love you.
They could fail you and still miss you.
They could be wrong and still be human.
It did not erase what they had done.
It just made the wound harder to understand.
When I arrived home, I found Marcus waiting outside my apartment.
I almost drove away.
He stood beside his expensive SUV wearing a gray jacket and the same confident expression he wore at every family event.
Except his confidence looked different now.
More like a costume that had started falling apart.
He pushed away from the vehicle when he saw me.
“We need to talk.”
I kept my keys in my hand.
“No.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Sabrina.”
I laughed quietly.
“You don’t get to say my name like we’re having a normal conversation.”
His jaw tightened.
“I know you’re upset.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
“I’m tired of people telling me what I feel.”
For a moment, he did not have an answer.
That was unusual.
Marcus had always been quick.
Quick with compliments.
Quick with excuses.
Quick with whatever version of himself the situation required.
“What did Dad tell you?”
The question was simple.
Too simple.
I studied him.
“You already know I talked to him.”
His expression changed.
Just slightly.
But enough.
“How?”
“You’re asking the wrong question.”
His face hardened.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
The old instinct returned.
The part of me that wanted to avoid conflict.
The part that wanted to make things easier.
I ignored it.
“You knew about the documents.”
Marcus looked away.
That was enough.
“You knew.”
He exhaled.
“Not everything.”
“Why does everyone in this family say that?”
“Because it’s true.”
I stepped closer.
“Then tell me what is true.”
He looked exhausted.
Not guilty.
Not yet.
Just exhausted.
“Can we talk somewhere else?”
“No.”
“Sabrina.”
“No.”
I pointed toward the building.
“This is my home.”
I paused.
“You don’t get to walk into my life whenever you decide it is time for a conversation.”
That sentence seemed to affect him.
Maybe because it sounded like something my father would say.
Maybe because he realized I was no longer the little sister waiting for approval.
He looked down.
“Helena is dangerous.”
I stared at him.
“That’s your explanation?”
“It’s a warning.”
“You think I’m going to believe you?”
“I think you should.”
The answer was immediate.
Almost desperate.
That caught my attention.
“What happened between you and Helena?”
Marcus looked toward the street.
Cars moved past us.
People walked by carrying groceries and coffee.
Everyone around us was living ordinary lives while mine continued collapsing.
“She found out I knew about the accounts.”
My stomach tightened.
“What accounts?”
He looked at me.
“The ones Mom discovered.”
I waited.
He rubbed his hands together.
Another nervous habit.
I had never noticed it before.
Or maybe I had never looked closely enough.
“She threatened me.”
“With what?”
He laughed once.
A humorless sound.
“With everything.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“It’s the truth.”
I wanted to dismiss him.
I wanted to believe he was manipulating me.
Part of me still remembered him laughing at dinner.
The applause.
The way he watched my humiliation like it was entertainment.
But another part of me saw something else.
Fear.
Real fear.
“What did you do, Marcus?”
He looked away.
The silence lasted too long.
That was my answer.
“What did you do?”
“I made mistakes.”
“Everyone says that when they don’t want to use the right word.”
His face tightened.
“You think I’m a monster.”
“I think I don’t know you.”
That hurt him.
I saw it.
For the first time in my life, I saw something reach him.
“I protected this family.”
The words came out before he could stop them.
I stared.
“By humiliating me?”
“No.”
“By helping Dad pretend nothing happened?”
His eyes dropped.
That was the moment I understood.
Marcus was not the perfect son.
He was the son who survived.
And he had confused survival with loyalty.
“I was twenty-four,” he said quietly.
I waited.
“When I found out there were problems, Dad told me the company would collapse if people found out.”
“That’s what he told everyone.”
“He was right.”
The honesty surprised me.
“The company employed thousands of people.”
“And that made it okay?”
“No.”
His answer was immediate.
“No, it didn’t.”
He swallowed.
“But I thought if I fixed things quietly, nobody would get hurt.”
“And did that work?”
He looked at me.
The answer was written on his face.
“No.”
A phone rang.
May you like
Neither of us moved.
Finally, Marcus looked at the screen.
