Part 7
“Yes,” she said.
“Can you move your legs?”
The question made her stomach turn.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t try yet.”
Vivian’s voice floated down from the landing.
“She fell.”
Gabriel did not look at her.
Chloe shut her eyes.
“Open them,” Gabriel said immediately.
She did.
The concern in his face was too much. Too late. Too close to tenderness.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Gabriel’s expression tightened.
“For what?”
“I shouldn’t have come.”
He stared at her.
Then his eyes moved to the leather case in her hand.
“What is that?”
Chloe tried to answer, but the pain took her breath again.
Vivian stepped closer to the railing.
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s an old phone. She brought it to upset you.”
Gabriel’s jaw set.
“I didn’t ask you.”
The words were quiet.
Vivian went still.
Chloe watched Gabriel absorb the room around him. The position of her body across the stairs. The way her dress had twisted beneath her. The red line under her nose. The leather case held against her chest. Vivian standing above them, untouched.
He was not a man who rushed easily to conclusions. Chloe remembered that about him. It had once seemed like thoughtfulness. Later, she had learned it could also be cowardice—his habit of waiting until every possibility had been arranged neatly before allowing himself to feel anything.
But now there was no neatness.
Only Chloe on the floor.
Only Vivian at the top of the stairs.
“Did you push her?” Gabriel asked.
Vivian inhaled sharply.
“No.”
Chloe’s eyes closed for a second.
Gabriel’s fingers tightened slightly beneath her head.
“Chloe.”
“She did,” Chloe said.
Vivian laughed, a broken sound that seemed meant to resemble disbelief.
“Gabriel, please.”
He looked up at her.
The expression on his face changed as he did.
Not anger yet.
Something more dangerous.
Attention.
Vivian saw it.
“She came at me,” Vivian said quickly. “She was holding that phone. She started accusing me. I tried to calm her down, and she stepped backward. I reached for her.”
Chloe stared at the ceiling.
The lie entered the house so smoothly it almost sounded possible.
Gabriel looked back at Chloe.
“What was she accusing you of?”
Vivian’s face shifted.
Chloe felt the leather case under her fingers.
“Three years ago,” she said, each word taking effort, “Margot’s recording. The leak.”
Gabriel went rigid.
The air changed.
Vivian’s silver gown flickered above them under the chandelier.
Gabriel’s eyes lowered to the phone case.
“What recording?” he asked.
Chloe almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because he knew.
Of course he knew.
The recording had wrecked his family for months. It had put his father under scrutiny, forced the foundation to issue statements, dragged Margot’s illness into public conversation. It had been the reason he looked at Chloe like she was a stranger.
Still, he asked the question as if he could not bear to say its name.
“The one everyone thought I sent,” Chloe said.
Gabriel’s face tightened.
Vivian spoke over her.
“She is trying to reopen something that was already settled.”
“No,” Chloe whispered. “It wasn’t.”
Gabriel’s gaze remained on the leather case.
“Why do you have my mother’s phone?”
“I found it.”
“Where?”
“At the studio. In one of the drawers from the estate archive.”
Vivian’s voice sharpened. “Gabriel, this is not the time.”
He looked up at her.
“No,” he said. “It is exactly the time.”
She stared.
Chloe watched them from the stairs and felt something inside her ache. Not hope. She refused to call it that. It was only the faint, painful recognition that Gabriel was finally asking questions he should have asked years ago.
Vivian’s eyes filled with tears.
The change was so fast that Chloe almost missed it.
“I was scared,” Vivian said.
Gabriel’s face did not soften.
“Of what?”
“Of what she would do.”
“What would she do?”
“She came here with a recording, Gabriel. She came here to hurt you.”
Chloe tried to push herself up.
Pain shot through her side.
Gabriel immediately steadied her shoulder.
“Don’t.”
“I need to tell you.”
“You can tell me without moving.”
Vivian’s hands curled at her sides.
Chloe looked at Gabriel.
“The recovered files show Vivian had access to Margot’s phone.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.
“Chloe.”
“They show she copied something. They show a message was sent from your old number.”
“Enough,” Vivian said.
Her voice echoed down the stairwell.
Gabriel looked up.
Vivian’s face had changed again. The tears remained, but something harder lived beneath them.
“Enough,” she repeated. “She has been waiting three years to say this.”
Chloe’s throat tightened.
“Yes,” she said. “I have.”
Vivian laughed bitterly.
“There. You hear that? She wants revenge.”
“No,” Chloe said. “I want you to stop rewriting what happened.”
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Gabriel’s hand stayed beneath Chloe’s head.
His thumb moved once near her temple, a reflexive, protective touch.
