I knock. Once. Hard.
There’s shuffling inside, a pause. She’s deciding whether to open the door. I know the sound of Vi deciding things and weighing options.
The door opens.
She’s in a T-shirt, hair down, no shoes. Her face is composed and guarded. The openness from the Skylight Room confrontation is gone and what’s left is the harder version, the one that said, “that’s what I thought,” and closed the door.
She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t invite me in. Just stands there in the doorway looking at me with an expression that saysthis better be good.
“Can I come in?”
“Depends on why you’re here.”
“To talk.”
“You don’t talk. That’s kind of the whole problem.”
Deserved. I take it.
“I know. That’s why I’m here.”
She studies me for five seconds. Then she steps back, walks to her bed, and sits on the edge, cross-legged, not making room for me and not making it easy.
I walk in, close the door, and stand there. The room is small. Mara’s blanket is folded at the foot of the bed. The bag of papers is under Vi’s side, same as always. The room smells like her.
I don’t sit. She didn’t offer. I stand near the door like a man who knows he might get thrown out and wants a short walk to the exit.
“You were right,” I say. Nothing else. Just that. Three words I’ve been carrying for too long. They come out flat, graceless, dropped into the room without ceremony.
Vi doesn’t react, but waits.
“About the papers. About your father.” I stop. Breathe. This is hard. Harder than running the Rot. Harder than contested territory. Harder than trade negotiations or threat assessments or tactical operations. Speaking honestly to a woman I care about is the hardest thing I’ve ever attempted, and I’m doing it badly. “Your dad was clean. The money never touched him. I followed it. Every line. Every account. He wasn’t part of it.”
Vi’s face changes. Something that was braced loosens, just slightly.
“How long have you known?” she asks.
Here it is. The part that’s going to cost me. “Since I read the papers.”
She absorbs that and I watch it hit. The timeline computes behind her eyes.Since he read the papers.He knew my father was clean and he didn’t tell me.
“Well,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“You’ve known my father was innocent. While I was lying awake wondering if you’d even looked at the evidence, while I was going to Armen asking what was wrong with you, while I stood in the Skylight Room and begged you to hear me. You already knew.”
“Yes.”
She stares at me and I let her. I don’t explain. I don’t justify. There’s no version of this that looks good, and I’m not going to insult her by pretending there is.
“Why,” she says.
Not angry. Not yet. Genuinely asking.
“Because I’m a stubborn asshole who doesn’t know how to say he was wrong.”
It comes out before I can shape it, raw and unedited, the truest thing I’ve said in months. There’s no operational logic behind it, no tactical framing, just the flat, ugly truth that I couldn’t admit I was wrong to a woman I’ve been wrong about since the day she showed up.
