Chapter 3: The Room at the End of the Hall
Julian told Victoria to take the boys to the playroom.
"Absolutely not.
I'm not leaving you alone with—"
"Victoria." He said her name once.
Quietly.
The way he spoke in boardrooms when the discussion was already over.
She went.
The maid stood in the hallway, still holding Leo's drawing against her chest.
Her knuckles were white.
She hadn't moved toward the door.
She hadn't run.
Julian noticed that.
Running would have been the easier choice.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Clara." Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"Clara Reeves."
Julian didn't recognize it.
But something about the way she said it — the slight hesitation before the last name, the way her chin lifted just slightly after — made him feel like she was deciding, in real time, how much of the truth to offer.
"Clara." He gestured toward the sitting room at the end of the hall.
"Please."
She followed him in.
He didn't close the door all the way.
She noticed that too, and some of the tension left her shoulders.
He sat.
She didn't.
"The lullaby," he said.
"I need to know where you learned it."
Clara looked at the window.
Outside, the city was doing what cities do — indifferent, enormous, carrying on.
She watched it for a moment like she was deciding whether to become part of it and disappear.
"I wrote it," she said.
Julian went very still.
"That's not possible," he said.
"That song was written by—" He stopped.
His throat closed.
"By Elise Hartley," Clara said.
"I know."
The name hit him like a physical thing.
He hadn't spoken it aloud in four years.
He hadn't let himself.
"Elise Hartley d*ed," he said.
"In the hospital.
The night the boys were born.
I was told—" He pressed his hand flat against the armrest.
"I was told she didn't survive."
Clara turned from the window and looked at him directly for the first time since they'd entered the room.
"Who told you that?" she asked.
Julian opened his mouth.
Closed it.
The answer was Victoria.
It had always been Victoria.
She had been the one at the hospital that night.
He had been in surgery himself — a car accident on the way, a broken collarbone, a concussion that had stolen three hours from his memory.
By the time he was coherent, Victoria was at his bedside telling him that Elise had gone into cardiac arrest during delivery.
That the doctors had done everything they could.
That the boys were alive but fragile.
That he needed to focus on them now.
He had believed her.
He had been grieving and concussed and holding two tiny boys who wouldn't stop crying, and he had believed every word.
"She told you I d*ed," Clara said.
It wasn't a question.
Julian looked at her face — really looked, the way he hadn't allowed himself to in the hallway.
The eyes.
The shape of the jaw.
The way she held herself even now, even frightened, with a kind of quiet dignity he had loved for three years before everything fell apart.
"Elise," he said.
The name came out broken.
She didn't correct him.
She didn't say yes.
But her eyes filled, and she pressed Leo's drawing tighter against her chest, and that was answer enough.
From down the hall came the sound of small feet.
Then Victoria's voice, sharp and controlled, steering the boys back toward the playroom.
Julian stood up slowly.
His legs felt unreliable.
"How long have you been in this building?" he asked.
"Eleven days," Clara said.
"Did you know it was my building when you took the position?"
She hesitated.
"Yes."
"Why didn't you come to me directly?"
She looked at him for a long moment.
"Because the last time I trusted the wrong person in your life, I lost four years with my sons."
The sitting room was quiet.
Outside, a siren passed far below and faded.
Julian walked to the door.
Stopped with his hand on the frame.
"Don't leave this apartment tonight," he said.
"Please."
He walked back down the hall toward the playroom.
Toward Victoria.
His steps were steady.
His face was composed.
But inside, something cold and methodical had switched on — the same thing that had built his company from nothing, that had outmaneuvered every rival who had ever underestimated him.
He needed to know exactly what Victoria had done.
Every detail.
Every lie.
May you like
Every person she had paid or threatened or used.
And he needed her to believe, for just a little while longer, that he still didn't know anything at all.
