I don’t believe that, but the guards won’t let me through.
I’m leaving this letter because I need you to hear it from me.
I am still pregnant.
I did not take anything.
I only need to know if you truly said those words.
The next line was blurred, as though rain or tears had touched it.
If you did, I will go.
If you didn’t, please find me before I have nowhere safe left.
Adrian lowered the page.
The room had changed.
The silent staff were no longer pretending not to see.
Their faces were lifted now, fear and recognition passing between them.
The mansion, polished and expensive and staged for a wedding, had become a witness stand.
Victoria recovered first because she always did.
‘A letter proves nothing,’ she said.
‘It proves she wrote a dramatic story after abandoning her job.’
Elena tried to stand.
Adrian reached for her, carefully this time, and she accepted his arm.
He felt how weak she was.
How little strength she had been spending on herself.
‘Sit,’ he said softly.
She lowered onto the nearest chair, still soaked, still shivering.
A maid hurried forward with a towel, but stopped when Victoria snapped her name.
Adrian turned.
‘Give her the towel.’
The maid did.
The small act seemed to hum through the room.
Victoria’s orders had always filled the mansion.
Adrian’s had just replaced them.
Elena pressed the towel to her face with shaking hands.
‘You said the baby almost died,’ Adrian said.
His voice was controlled with effort.
‘Tell me everything.’
Victoria stepped between them.
‘Absolutely not.
She is not going to sit in my home and accuse me of—’
‘This is not your home,’ Adrian said.
Victoria blinked.
It was the first open wound he gave her.
The mansion had belonged to Adrian before Victoria arrived.
His father had left it to him, and every room still carried that quiet fact beneath Victoria’s flowers and gold linen samples.
She had moved through the house like a future owner because everyone had let her.
Adrian no longer did.
Elena looked from one to the other, then down at her stomach.
‘It was the back staircase,’ she said.
‘The narrow one near the laundry hall.
I had come back because I needed my documents.
I thought if I had my papers, I could find safer work before the baby came.’
Her voice thinned on the last words.
‘I didn’t know she was there.’
Victoria whispered, ‘Liar.’
Elena flinched, but she continued.
‘She said I was stubborn.
She said I had already ruined enough.
I told her I wasn’t there for Adrian.
I just needed my things.’
