Chapter 13 - I Let Alina Think She Still Had Time
I did not confront Malcolm first.
I confronted Alina.
But I did it carefully.
I sent Maria upstairs with Noah and told her not to let him come down no matter what he heard. Then I asked Alina to join me in the formal sitting room.
She came in pale but composed, as if she had decided the morning’s chaos might still be survivable if she stayed calm enough.
I laid the contract on the coffee table.
The bank summaries beside it.
Then Elena’s photograph.
No speech. No accusation. Just the evidence.
Alina’s eyes moved from one item to the next.
Then she looked at me.
“How much do you think you understand?” she asked.
It was such a terrible line because it contained no denial at all.
“Enough,” I said.
She gave a small, bitter laugh.
“You always did understand too late.”
I felt something inside me harden.
“So tell me what I’m late to.”
She folded her arms. “Your wife made choices, Declan. Elena built a trust structure people could exploit, then acted shocked when someone tried. Malcolm saw it. I saw it. You saw nothing.”
The way she said Elena’s name made me want to throw her out the front door.
Instead, I kept still.
“Did you marry me for access to Noah’s trust?”
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then said, “I married you because you were a man too distracted by grief to notice what people were doing around you.”
My pulse pounded in my ears.
“And Noah?”
Her expression flickered with impatience.
“He complicated everything. If he had just been sent somewhere appropriate, no one would have needed scenes like this.”
There it was.
No love. No remorse. Not even ordinary hatred.
Just inconvenience.
I stepped closer.
“You kicked a disabled child onto marble because he wouldn’t hand you a photograph.”
Her face tightened. “Because he found something that should have been gone.”
That was as close to a confession as I needed.
And while she didn’t know it, I had already used her own house phone to record every word from the moment she walked into the room.
When I reached for the recorder on the side table, the first crack finally showed in her control.
May you like
Because for the first time that day, Alina understood the room had turned against her.
---
