But to Evelyn, this place was safer than any mansion Victor had ever built.
She sat on a leather couch. The children asleep nearby. Her lawyer, Rachel Lynn, across from her.
“Do you think I’m weak?” Evelyn asked without looking up.
“No,” Rachel said.
“Victor does.”
And so Evelyn began.
Roses one day. Silence the next. The locked bank accounts. The isolation.
“I found out about his first mistress at six months pregnant. It wasn’t Nadia.”
Rachel listened.
“The babies came early. I was unconscious. When I woke up, Victor wasn’t there.”
Rachel’s throat tightened.
“He never came. Not once.”
Evelyn looked up. “You want to know why?”
Rachel nodded.
“He told the doctor it’d be simpler if they didn’t survive.”
A long silence.
“No more silence,” Rachel said finally.
Evelyn nodded. “We go public. Not for revenge. For history. My sons won’t grow up believing silence is strength.”
