“It’s not enough.”
Zara’s voice was flat with defeat. They were back in Eleanora’s study, the three of them, the air stale with the feeling of an impasse.
“She believes me. She trusts me,” Zara explained, her gaze fixed on the floor. “But the fear for her children is absolute. Our promises of legal protection, of police escorts… they feel like paper shields against Isolde’s threats. They’re too abstract.”
Caspian paced the room, the pretense of the subordinate soldier fraying with every step. He had swallowed the bitter pill of his passive role, but it was dissolving into pure, useless rage. They were going to lose. After everything, they were going to be defeated by fear.
“We cannot guarantee her family’s safety as long as they remain in this city,” Eleanora stated, her voice a grim finality. “Isolde’s reach, or the perception of it, is too great.”
The frustration finally broke through Caspian’s carefully constructed composure. He stopped pacing. The fury in his gut sharpened into something cold and clear. He stopped thinking like a soldier and started thinking like a Hawthorne.
“Protection isn’t enough,” he said, his voice hard. He looked at his grandmother, at Zara. “You’re right. A piece of paper won’t save her. So we stop trying to protect her.”
He let the silence hang for a moment before delivering the rest.
“We make her disappear.”
Zara looked up, a question in her eyes. Eleanora’s expression remained unreadable, but she was listening.
“We use the full weight of Hawthorne Industries,” Caspian continued, the plan forming, solidifying as he spoke. “This isn’t about lawyers and restraining orders anymore. This is about a complete extraction. A comprehensive relocation package.”
He laid it out, his voice gaining momentum, each word a brick in the new foundation of their strategy.
“New, federally-backed identities for her entire family. A new home, purchased outright, in a state of her choosing. A trust fund, established immediately, to cover her children’s education through university. A guaranteed job for her husband with one of our subsidiaries, a position that matches his qualifications, waiting for him the day they arrive.”
It was an offer of a new life. Not just safety. A future, scrubbed clean of Isolde Finch.
“It would be… an immense expenditure,” Eleanora said, her voice neutral.
“It’s a rounding error,” Caspian countered, his gaze unwavering. “And it’s the only move we have left.” He was no longer asking for permission. He was presenting the solution. This was his atonement, forged into something tangible. Something powerful.
A flicker of something—pride, perhaps—crossed Eleanora’s face. She looked at her grandson and saw, for the first time in a long time, the man he was supposed to be.
“Do it,” she commanded.
The next day, Zara met Maria in a quiet corner of a public library. She didn’t speak. She simply opened a thick, leather-bound binder and placed it on the table between them.
Inside were deeds, bank statements, school brochures, and employment contracts. There were photos of a house in a quiet suburban cul-de-sac a thousand miles away. There were account numbers for a trust that already existed.
Zara made the abstract promise of safety undeniably real.
Maria stared at the documents, her hands trembling as she traced the name on the deed. It wasn’t her name. Not yet. But it could be.
Tears welled in her eyes, but this time, they were not tears of fear. They were tears of impossible, earth-shattering hope.
She looked up at Zara, and through the tears, she gave a single, decisive nod.
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