Chapter 6 - The Silver Sedan
The air outside was bitter, the wind whipping through the pine trees along my driveway as Lena and I walked toward the idling silver car. I kept my hands in my heavy coat pockets, my eyes fixed on the tint of the windshield.
As we approached, the driver's door opened, and Julian stepped out. He looked smaller than he had at the wedding six months ago. Without his tailored tuxedos and the grand backdrop of the Ashford estate, he was just a thin, thirty-year-old man with soft hands and dark circles under his eyes.
"Lena," he said, stepping forward, his hands outstretched. "Thank God. I tried to call you twenty times. Your mother’s phone was blocking my number—"
"I blocked it, Julian," Lena said, stopping five feet away from him. I stood half a step behind her, a solid, immovable wall. "I told you everything I had to say through Uncle Daniel’s lawyers."
"Lena, please," Julian begged, his voice cracking. "You have to understand the position I was in last night! Vivienne was hysterical. She’s my sister! If the board found out she shoved Mrs. Alvarez, the entire London deal would have collapsed! We would have lost millions!"
"A woman was bleeding on your floor, Julian," Lena said, her voice terrifyingly quiet. "A woman who worked for your father for twenty years. And your first thought wasn't to call an ambulance—it was to protect a deal."
"I was trying to keep the peace!" Julian argued, taking another desperate step closer. "My mother was watching! The whole family was there! If I had taken your side right then, Vivienne would have declared war on us! She would have cut us out of the foundation!"
"She tried to kill our baby, Julian," Lena spat, the raw truth finally breaking through her composure. Her voice rang out across the quiet snowy street. "She pushed a seventy-year-old woman into me, trying to send us both down a stone staircase! And you told me not to make it ugly!"
Julian flinched as if the words were hot iron. He looked at me, pleadingly. "Mrs. Mercer... Ruth... please tell her. You know how families are. Things get heated. Vivienne has a temper, she didn't mean to—"
"Shut up, Julian," I said, my voice dropping into the low, terrifying tone I used on combative trauma patients. "Do not speak to me. Do not look at me. You are a weak, cowardly boy who allowed his sister to commit violence in his own home because you were afraid of losing your allowance."
"It's not an allowance!" Julian snapped, his pride flaring up briefly before dying back down under my stare. "It's my legacy! It's the Ashford name!"
"The Ashford name is trash," Lena said clearly. "It's a fancy label on a house full of cruel, miserable people who eat each other alive for equity. I am done with it. My child will carry the name Mercer."
Julian stared at her, his mouth open, realizing for the first time that there was no negotiation left. The quiet, gentle girl who had spent six months trying to fit into his mother's velvet-draped dining room was gone forever.
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"Sign the final custody waiver by noon, Julian," Lena said, turning her back on him. "If you don't, Uncle Daniel releases the clock footage to every local news station in Massachusetts before the five o'clock news. Let's see what happens to the Ashford hotel stock when the public sees your sister in action."
She didn't wait for his answer. She took my arm, and together we walked back up the driveway, leaving Julian standing alone in the snow beside his idling luxury car.
