The drive to the Hawthorne estate was a journey through a landscape of guilt. Every oak tree lining the private road seemed to stand as a silent judgment. He remembered climbing them as a boy, his grandmother watching from the veranda with a rare, approving smile. He had been a child who honored his family name. He was no longer that child.
He expected to see the family doctor’s car parked in the circular drive, a sign of a genuine crisis. The gravel was empty. That was the first red flag.
The front doors swung open before he could touch them. The butler, a man who had served the family for forty years, met him with an impassive expression. “Mrs. Hawthorne is in her study, sir.”
Not her bedroom. Not a sickbed. The study.
The second red flag.
Caspian’s anxiety curdled into a cold dread. He walked down the long, silent hall, the portraits of his ancestors watching him pass. He felt the weight of their gaze, of the legacy he had so carelessly tarnished for a woman built of lies.
He found Eleanora Hawthorne not in a state of collapse, but seated behind her massive rosewood desk. She was dressed impeccably in a silk blouse, her silver hair coiled in its usual elegant knot. In her hand was a television remote. On the large screen mounted on the wall, Lyra’s face was frozen mid-sentence, her expression a portrait of raw, courageous honesty from her `Live Address`.
Eleanora clicked a button. The screen went black.
The silence that followed was absolute.
“There is no health crisis,” she said, her voice as cool and clear as ice water. “At least, not my own.”
She gestured to the leather chair opposite her desk. It was the same chair he’d sat in when he was a boy, confessing to some minor transgression. This was no minor transgression.
“Sit down, Caspian.”
He obeyed, his body moving stiffly. He felt stripped bare, every defense he’d ever constructed rendered useless under her unwavering stare.
“You are going to tell me what you have done to that girl.” It was not a question. It was a command.
He opened his mouth to formulate a response, a carefully worded explanation, but she cut him off.
“Do not insult my intelligence with a performance,” she said, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous register. “I have spent the last hour watching your wife dismantle a lifetime of carefully constructed privacy to defend herself. From you. From the vulgar circus you have created.”
Her disappointment was a physical force, more potent than any rage he had ever faced.
“We had an agreement,” she continued, her fingers steepled on the desk. “A marriage of convenience, yes. But one that was to be conducted with honor. You were to protect her, to give her the security of the Hawthorne name in exchange for the stability our family required. You have not only failed to protect her, Caspian. You have become the threat.”
She leaned forward slightly, her eyes piercing him. “This is not a negotiation. It is a reckoning. You will start at the beginning. And you will omit nothing.”
The recording of Lyra’s address was gone, but her image was seared into the air between them. It was the undeniable truth, the ghost in the room that had finally summoned him to judgment.
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