Chapter 9 - THE LAST VOW COLIN EVER HEARD
When Paige showed Tessa's documents to Evelyn the next morning, her attorney did not congratulate her. She asked where they came from, whether the envelope had been opened before Paige received it, and whether Tessa had kept any originals. Then she arranged for the materials to be delivered to Nadia through a documented process.
Paige understood why. For too long she'd lived among people who believed a powerful accusation should become a fact the moment it served their interests. She wanted the opposite. She wanted the truth to be strong enough that it didn't require anyone to exaggerate it.
The surveillance budget approval carried Arthur's signature. Other documents connected Victor Salcedo to a car-service company that had been paid to follow Sofia on the final week of her life. A maintenance receipt showed that one of the vehicles involved had been taken into a private garage immediately after her crash. None of it alone established who had caused her death. Together, the records were enough for investigators to reopen questions that had been closed too quickly.
Gabriel learned the news from his attorney. He sent Paige a short message through Evelyn: Thank you for getting it to people who can find the answer. No request to see her followed.
Paige read it twice and put it away.
A hearing was scheduled on the preservation of Bellmont assets and the release of records needed to restore the identities of affected residents. Separately, Evelyn was pursuing legal protection for Paige after Colin's unwanted contacts. June and Tessa would not be forced to turn their lives into a television spectacle. Paige volunteered to speak publicly about her own experience, with guidance from counsel about what she could safely disclose.
"You don't need to become the face of everyone's suffering," June warned during a visit to the legal clinic.
"I don't want to," Paige said. "I want people to know we exist outside the stories these men tell about us."
June nodded. "Then tell your story. Let us tell ours when we're ready."
On the morning of the hearing, Paige woke before dawn. Rain tapped against the bakery awning. She made coffee, toasted bread, and chose a navy jacket that she'd bought at a secondhand shop. The simple rituals felt monumental. Nobody had told her what to wear, how much to eat, or which expression to practice in the mirror.
She found herself thinking about the cathedral. The white lilies. Arthur's grip on her arm. Colin's hand closing around hers. How small she'd made her breathing so that he wouldn't accuse her of causing trouble. The woman walking down that aisle had not been weak. She had been cornered. The distinction mattered.
Outside the courthouse cameras crowded the sidewalk. Reporters called her name. She walked with Evelyn and a clinic representative, without Gabriel, without a bodyguard pretending to be a date, and without a public statement from anyone claiming to speak for her.
Richard Whitmore stood near the steps surrounded by lawyers. His tailored coat was immaculate. He looked offended by the inconvenience of public scrutiny, as though the investigation were a breach of etiquette. Colin was beside him, his face leaner than it had been at the wedding, his hair fixed in the familiar golden sweep.
Paige tried to pass without looking at either of them.
"Paige," Colin called. "You owe me a conversation."
She kept walking.
He stepped into her path. Evelyn immediately told him to move aside. A deputy at the entrance turned toward the disturbance, but Colin lowered his voice before anyone else could hear.
"Your father could go to prison," he said. "You can still help him. Tell them Rossy forced you to leave me. That's all you have to do."
Paige looked straight at him. "I will not lie for you."
His eyes flashed. "You always have to make everything difficult."
"No," she said. "I just stopped making it easy for you."
He caught her forearm. The pressure was familiar enough to send her body back two years in an instant. For a second the courthouse vanished, replaced by Colin's old kitchen and the cold tile against her knees. Then she felt the sleeve of her navy jacket, heard the reporters calling, and saw Evelyn turn toward the deputy.
"Let go of me," Paige said, loudly and clearly.
Colin leaned closer. "Don't embarrass me again."
"Let. Go."
The deputy approached. Colin released her as if he'd been burned and immediately started explaining that they were a couple having an emotional conversation. Several people had filmed the encounter. The deputy separated them while Evelyn documented what had happened.
Paige's forearm ached. But she had remained upright, and she had said no where others could hear it. Her body continued to shake even after she entered the building. She didn't resent the shaking. It was doing its best to keep her alive.
The proceeding lasted most of the day. Lawyers argued over which records had to be preserved, who could access them, and what protections could be established for people whose identifying information had been used. The judge did not settle the entire criminal investigation from the bench. He ordered specific preservation measures and set further proceedings. Some decisions were deferred. It was slow, imperfect, and real.
That afternoon Nadia confirmed that Arthur had begun providing investigators with records through his attorney. He was not doing it for free. His lawyer was seeking consideration in any future charging decision. Paige felt no surprise. He still tried to turn truth into a transaction.
But the information he supplied proved useful. A storage account tied to Victor contained delivery logs matching portions of Tessa's photocopies. Records placed Richard's staff near the road where Sofia had crashed. A witness who had previously recanted agreed to speak again after learning that the original transportation records were still available.
Richard's attorneys issued a denial. Victor's representatives declined to comment. Colin told a reporter that Paige had been manipulated by criminals. Yet the day's images told a simpler story: he had reached for a woman who'd told him to stay away, and he'd let go only when other people intervened.
Paige's phone flooded with requests for interviews. Some headlines praised her courage. Others romanticized Gabriel as a shadowy savior, erasing the decisions she'd made on her own. She refused both versions. In a brief statement outside Evelyn's office, she said, "I survived an abusive relationship. I helped preserve evidence because other people were being harmed. Neither action makes me anybody's possession or anybody's prize."
She went home before reporters could demand more.
That night someone knocked on the apartment door. Paige checked the peephole and saw Arthur, standing alone under the flickering hallway light with a manila folder in his hands. Her heart clenched with a child's old reflex to open the door for her father.
"I have something for you," he said. "It's about your mother."
Paige kept the chain fastened. "Give it to Evelyn."
"Can't I just talk to my daughter?"
"You can write to me through counsel."
His face crumpled. "I never meant for it to get this far."
"You keep saying that as if the distance matters more than the direction you chose."
Arthur looked down at the folder. "Richard told me that if I helped track Sofia, he would release the money I owed. I didn't know what Victor intended. I swear I didn't know she'd die."
"Then tell the investigators everything."
"I already have."
Paige waited. He seemed to expect more: an embrace, absolution, perhaps the familiar promise that a family could still be repaired if the daughter did enough work. Instead she said, "I hope you keep telling the truth."
She closed the door gently. Then she sat on the floor and cried for the father she had wanted him to be. She wasn't crying because she'd made the wrong choice. She was grieving the fact that the right one still hurt.
Two days later investigators arrested Victor Salcedo on charges relating to financial fraud and witness interference. Richard Whitmore was charged in a separate federal case involving the misuse of funds and coercive schemes at Bellmont. Both men denied wrongdoing. The circumstances of Sofia's death remained under active investigation.
Colin was served with protective orders and faced additional scrutiny over allegations of assault and attempted witness intimidation. Those proceedings would take time. There would be lawyers, delays, possible trials, and arguments over evidence. Paige had learned enough to understand that an arrest was not a conviction and a headline was not an ending.
But it was an opening.
On a cool Friday evening, Evelyn called with an update about Gabriel. His lawyers had secured his release pending further proceedings, subject to conditions. Some of the claims made through Victor's materials were weakening under scrutiny, though questions about Gabriel's own business conduct remained serious.
"He asked whether I could pass along a message," Evelyn said. "I told him I'd ask you first."
Paige looked around her small kitchen: mismatched mugs, a calendar she'd bought herself, a grocery list stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. Her life was incomplete, uncertain, and hers.
"You can tell him I'll meet him for coffee," she said. "Somewhere public. No drivers waiting at the curb."
Evelyn laughed. "I'll convey the terms."
May you like
Paige ended the call and watched the city lights blink on beyond the bakery awning. At the cathedral, Colin had believed vows mattered more than consent. He'd been wrong. The most important promise Paige had made was one she'd never spoken aloud until now.
No man would ever decide her future for her again.
