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The air at the table evaporated.

"Emma," Victoria warned, her voice tightening. She could feel the ground shifting, a dangerous line approaching.

But Emma couldn't stop. The emotional dam had broken, and she was lashing out blindly.

"That poor man sent you letters for years. Birthdays, Christmases, just trying to be part of your life. And you couldn't even be bothered to reply to a single one. You never visited. You didn't care. And now you just see his death as a convenient way to cash out."

Silence crashed down over the booth. The café faded away.

The letters.

Emma’s words sliced through Victoria’s ribs with surgical precision, burying the blade directly into her deepest, rawest wound. Emma didn't know. She didn't know that Victoria’s step-father had intercepted every single envelope, manufacturing a lifetime of silence to manipulate his wife into cutting ties with her own father. Emma didn't know that Victoria was currently suffocating under the grief of a relationship that had been stolen from her.

Victoria stared at Emma across the table, the words ringing in the small booth.

She could say it right now—that she hadn't known Joe had reached out until two days ago. She could explain the decades of manufactured silence that had never been her choice. Instead, the words dried up in her throat. Emma had taken the one wound Victoria didn't know how to carry and used it as a weapon. Handing her the rest of the truth felt impossible.

Victoria pulled her hand back from the middle of the table, letting the quiet settle like dust between them. Every bit of warmth from the kitchen was gone. Emma probably felt the shift. The color drained from her face as the temperature at the table plummeted. "Victoria, I—"

"You are correct," Victoria said.

Her voice was perfectly level. It held no anger. It was empty.

"I didn't mean it like that," Emma stammered, panic flooding her eyes as she desperately reached across the table. "I just meant... God, sorry, I—"

Victoria slid out of the booth in one fluid motion. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a twenty-pound note, and placed it neatly next to her untouched coffee.

"Enjoy your lunch, Emma," Victoria said, her face a flawless mask. "I have emails to catch up on. I'll walk back alone."

"Victoria, please, wait—"

Victoria turned away. Her spine was rigid, her shoulders squared perfectly as she walked out the glass doors of the café without looking back once.

✽✽✽

The house was suffocatingly quiet.

Victoria sat in the master suite, the heavy wooden door locked securely behind her. The afternoon sun baked the windowpanes, but she felt cold. It was the familiar chill of isolation, the freezing comfort of knowing she was the only person she could rely on.

Downstairs, she could hear the muffled sounds of Emma working. Cupboards slammed. Tools clattered. Two rooms checking in. An hour later, she heard Emma fixing the squeaky hinges on the second floor, the rhythmic, aggressive twist of a screwdriver echoing through the floorboards. Victoria ignored it. She sat at the desk, staring blankly at her laptop.

She had let herself believe the kitchen meant something. For an hour, she had forgotten who she was in this house—an intruder, a stranger tied to a deed. She had let Emma close enough to touch her, and Emma had known exactly where to strike.

By seven o'clock, the shadows stretched across the bedroom floor. Footsteps approached her door. They paused. A soft knock broke the silence.

"Victoria?" Emma called out, her voice barely above a whisper.

Victoria stared at the grain of the wood. She didn't move a muscle.

"Victoria, I know you're in there. Please, just... let me apologize. I was out of line. I was hurting, and I lashed out, and it wasn't fair."

The apology hung in the air, heavy with regret. A week ago, Victoria might have opened the door. Now, she offered absolute silence. She listened as Emma let out a ragged breath.

"Okay. I get it. You don't want to talk."

The footsteps retreated. A few minutes later, Victoria heard Emma return, setting something down on the small table in the hallway before walking away for good.

Victoria opened her laptop. The screen illuminated her face in harsh blue light. She opened her email client, pulling up a blank message, and typed Harrison’s address into the recipient line.