“What do you need from me?”
“Power,” Celeste said. “Protection. Good lawyers. Time to get strong enough to stand in a courtroom without falling over.”
“You stay here until it’s done,” he said. “No one knows you’re alive. That remains true until I say otherwise.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Because it’s safer?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not the only reason.”
His jaw shifted. “My children need their mother alive.”
That was not a love confession. It was more complicated and therefore, in its way, more honest.
Celeste nodded once. “Then we have a deal.”
The next eight weeks turned her from survivor into strategist again.
At first she could barely cross the room without trembling. Her muscles had melted away under coma and blood loss. Her abdomen ached. Her balance was unreliable. There were mornings she sat on the edge of the bed furious at how weak fury could look inside a damaged body.
But weakness, she discovered, can be temporary when anger has a schedule.
She walked circuits around the glass room. Then down the hallway. Then the stairs. A nutritionist built her back out of protein, broth, fruit, iron, and stubbornness. Miriam brought her the evidence envelope and watched her read her own letter with tears sliding silently down her face. Lucian’s legal team coached her through affidavits, custody filings, insurance fraud claims, and the chain of custody necessary to make every piece of evidence hold up in court.
At night, when the lake outside went black and the house fell quiet, Celeste watched the videos she had made in secret.
Not to torture herself.
To remember exactly who Brad was when he cried in public and charmed donors and shook hands with elected men.
Sometimes Lucian sat in the room while she watched.
When a video ended with Brad driving her to the floor and calling her dead weight, Lucian’s fingers tightened around the arm of the chair until the leather creaked. He never looked away. Neither did she.
One evening, after a particularly ugly clip, Celeste shut the laptop and stared out at the dark water.
“Do you know the worst part?” she asked.
Lucian waited.
“It wasn’t the first time he hit me. It wasn’t even the cheating.” Her voice stayed level, but it had that metallic steadiness grief gets right before it cuts. “It was how quickly everyone adjusted to my suffering. His mother. Our friends. Even me. That’s how men like him survive. They don’t just break your body. They rewrite normal.”
Lucian looked at her profile in the window reflection. “Not this time.”
That was how he promised things. No poetry. No softness. Just something shaped like a verdict.
At the first hearing, Brad arrived with a polished smile, Paige on his arm, and Beatrice behind them wearing pearls and judgment.
He thought he was there to complete paperwork.
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