Chapter 8: The Proposal
I should have ended the call.
David would have told me to end the call.
Gerald would have told me to end the call.
Every sensible instinct I had told me to end the call.
I didn't end the call.
"I'm listening," I said.
"Good." Callum Reeve's voice had the quality of someone who had spent decades in rooms where he was the most important person.
Not loud.
Not aggressive.
Just settled, the way a man sounds when he has rarely been told no.
"I want to be honest with you.
What's happening tomorrow is going to be unpleasant for everyone.
Contested estate hearings tend to drag on.
Months, sometimes.
The legal fees alone—"
"What's your proposal?"
A small pause.
He hadn't expected me to cut across him.
"Simple," he said.
"Walk away from the Harwick-related assets.
Sign them over to the estate trust — which I will administer jointly with Diana and Thomas — and in return, I drop the injunction, I drop the fraud claim, and you keep the house, the investment accounts, and whatever Russell left you in that storage unit."
"You know about the storage unit."
"I know Russell kept one.
I don't know what's in it." The smoothness in his voice thinned slightly.
"But I know Russell.
He was a careful man.
Whatever he kept there, it would be better for everyone if it stayed private."
"Better for everyone," I said.
"Or better for you?"
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
"The Harwick assets," I said.
"What are they worth?"
"That's a matter of some dispute—"
"Approximately."
A beat.
"Approximately four million."
I walked to the window of the kitchen.
The rose bushes were dark shapes in the evening light.
"Mr.
Reeve," I said.
"You falsified a property valuation.
You fraudulently transferred a painting from my husband's collection.
You've spent six years filing bad-faith litigation against a man who had the documentation to expose you, and you waited until he was in the ground to make your move." I kept my voice level.
"And your proposal is that I give you four million dollars to make that go away."
Silence.
"I'd think carefully," he said, and the smoothness was gone now.
"You're a thirty-two-year-old woman with no legal background and no family money.
I have been in litigation for thirty years.
I know how to make a case last.
I know how to make it expensive.
I know how to make it public in ways that are very uncomfortable for a young widow who married a wealthy older man under circumstances that already look—"
"Stop."
He stopped.
"I'll see you tomorrow," I said.
"Bring your lawyers."
I ended the call.
My hands were shaking again — not the way they had shaken in Gerald's office, with grief and uncertainty.
This was different.
This was anger, clean and clarifying, the kind that doesn't cloud your thinking but sharpens it.
I called David.
He picked up on the second ring.
"Reeve just called me directly," I said.
A short silence.
"What did he offer?"
I told him.
"And you said?"
"I told him I'd see him tomorrow."
Another silence, longer this time.
Then: "Good.
Don't speak to him again without me present." His voice had shifted — something in it that sounded almost like relief.
"He called you because he's worried.
That unit scared him.
He doesn't know what's in it, and that's the first time in this entire situation that Callum Reeve has been operating without information."
"He threatened to make it public.
The circumstances of the marriage."
"Let him try." David's voice was flat.
"Russell's letter is on the record.
Gerald's notes from fourteen months of estate planning are on the record.
The competency attestation is on the record.
Any attempt to paint you as a manipulator runs directly into all of that." A pause.
"He's bluffing.
He called you tonight because he wanted to settle before I've had a chance to read everything in that cabinet."
"Have you finished reading it?"
"I've been reading it for the last two hours." A pause.
"Russell didn't just keep records.
He kept a timeline.
Every contact Reeve made.
Every threat.
Every legal filing.
Cross-referenced with the financial documents." His voice was quiet.
"Your husband was methodical.
He knew this day might come, and he spent years making sure you wouldn't face it alone."
I sat down at the kitchen table.
"David," I said.
"Is it enough?
For tomorrow?"
"Yes," he said.
"It's enough."
After I hung up, I sat in the kitchen for a long time.
The house was quiet the way it always was now, but it felt different tonight — less like absence, more like something waiting.
I thought about Russell asking if my feet hurt.
Such a small thing.
The first kind thing in such a long time.
I went to bed.
May you like
I didn't sleep much.
But when morning came, I was ready.
