Chapter 6 I Will Make You All Pay

• Odette's POV
• Carrington House hadn’t changed. The steps still shone like they’d been polished with guilt. At noon the iron gates were open and the front lawn was a grid of cameras, tripods, and people who fed on spectacle the way our family fed on trust funds. I kept my statement short: the original will exists; the investigation into my grandfather’s death would be reopened; any attempt to intimidate or entrap me would be answered in court. No questions. I didn’t give them blood. I gave them a clock.
• Inside, the noise fell away. Marble swallowed sound. Sunlight slid through the tall windows and turned the dust to gold. On the landing above the great hall, our grandfather’s portrait watched like he had something to say and would wait for me to be ready to hear it.
• “Odette.”
• Ellis stood in the doorway of the music room, tie loose, hair in the kind of disorder that reads as romantic from far away. Up close it was panic. He shut the door behind me and hovered like he expected me to bolt.
• “I’m not running,” I said. “That was your job five years ago.”
• He flinched and tried a smile that had saved him more times than truth ever would. “I deserve that. I know I do. But can we talk? Just… us?”
• “Talk,” I said, and leaned against the cold piano like I had all the time in the world.
• He moved closer, then stopped, hands spread. “I made mistakes.”
• “You made choices,” I corrected.
• His voice fell. “I never wanted you hurt.”
• “Then why did you hand me the match?”
• He blinked. “What?”
• “You called me the night he died,” I said. “Ten forty-one. You told me Grandfather was in his study and still angry about the foundation, but you could soften him if I came alone and used the garden door. You said to leave my phone because he ‘hated screens in that room.’ You told me to come without security so it wouldn’t ‘look like a siege.’”
• Ellis stared past me, anywhere but my eyes. “I—Odette…”
• “Do you remember what you told me to say when the police asked why the cameras were off?” I asked. “You told me to tell them I’d switched the corridor power because the bulb was buzzing and Grandfather hated the sound. You said it would make me look helpful. It made me look like I knew exactly where the breakers were.”
• He shut his eyes like the dark would absolve him.
• “You put my bracelet on the edge of his desk,” I said. “You said you found it when we were cleaning up after that charity meeting and you thought it would cheer him to see it. ‘He loves seeing you wear your mother’s things,’ you said. It put me in the room before I even arrived.”
• He sank onto the bench. “I was trying to buy time. Sebastian said—”
• “Sebastian said a lot of things to save Brielle,” I snapped. “And you repeated them because you wanted a seat at their table. You asked me to sign a statement ‘to protect the family’—remember? The one that said I’d handled his medication that week. You called it a courtesy to the nurses. It turned into an admission.”
• His hands shook. “I thought they would fix it. I thought if I kept you calm and kept the press away and told the right story, we could undo it—”
• “You told me to confess to mishandling the pills so Brielle wouldn’t ‘break under pressure,’” I said. “You told me if I loved you, I’d keep the family from tearing itself apart.”
• He looked up. “I did love you.”
• “No,” I said. “You loved being loved by a Carrington.”
• He made a small, helpless sound and scraped a hand through his hair. For a second I saw the boy he used to be—the one who’d kissed me under a rain gutter and swore we’d run away to somewhere that didn’t care about last names. Then the man reappeared, the one who learned that proximity to power feels a lot like power itself.
• “Do you know what five years is?” I asked softly. “Not on paper. In breath.”
• His eyes lifted, guilty and empty. “Odette—”
• “Five years is concrete that never warms. It’s learning the names of keys on a guard’s ring by the way they jingle outside your cell. It’s counting the pale chips in the paint above your bed because sleep can’t find you. It’s the woman in the next bunk crying into a towel because sound travels and weakness is a scent. It’s working laundry till your hands split and the water stings and pretending that makes you clean.”
• I saw it again like film burned into the back of my eyelids: the first night when the door closed and the lights took the color out of everything; Mara, who taught me where to stand so I wouldn’t be cornered; the day a guard “lost” my letter and laughed when I asked if Ellis had written back; the winter my mother’s watch stopped because metal takes on the temperature of the room; the taste of blood the time I didn’t move fast enough and learned that even behind bars someone will still decide you deserve to bleed. I’d stitched myself back together so many times the thread felt like part of my skin.
• “You told me to keep quiet because the truth would ‘blow over,’” I said. “It didn’t blow over. It buried me.”
• His eyes blurred. He reached for me without thinking and I stepped away. The space between us felt like the point of a knife.
• “I will make you all pay,” I said. “Every single one who thought my silence would make them rich.”
• He nodded quickly, tears spilling like they wanted to wash him clean. “I know. I know. And I deserve it. I’ll help you. I’ll go to the police. I’ll testify. I’ll give you every email, every account Sebastian used, every time Brielle asked me to—” His throat closed. “Please let me make it right.”
• “There isn’t a right,” I said. “There’s the truth. Bring it to me, not to them. Then we’ll talk about what you can buy back.”
• “I will,” he said, stumbling to his feet. “I swear—Odette, I swear on—”
• “Don’t swear on him,” I said, glancing at the portrait. “You already broke that once.”
• He followed my eyes and swallowed. “Okay. Okay.” He dragged a sleeve over his face and drew a breath that tried to be steady. “You’ll see. I’ll fix what I can.”
• He moved toward the door. For a heartbeat he was the boy at the rain gutter again, hopeful and sure that promises could turn the world. He opened the door and stepped into the hall.
• I heard him before I saw him, his voice dropped low for the corner by the red damask curtains where the security camera didn’t reach. “Yeah,” he said, and all the break in his tone vanished. “Plan B. She killed the contract at the church, but we can push a marital trust without the ceremony—optics, asset protection, her ‘best interest.’ Draft language like clause seven, but softer. I’ll get her to sign something ‘temporary’ before the board meeting. We can file after. No, not Brielle’s firm—you know who to use. Send it to me in an hour.”
• He ended the call and turned. When he saw me in the mirror above the console table, his face blanched. He hadn’t realized the glass gave him away.
• “So that’s the atonement,” I said.
• He opened and closed his mouth. “It’s not what you think.”
• “It’s exactly what I think.” My voice didn’t rise. It didn’t have to. “You’re still the boy who learned that if you say the right words to a woman who loves you, she’ll walk into the fire and believe she chose it.”
• He reached for a smile and found nothing. “Odette, wait—”
• “I did my waiting,” I said, and walked past him.
• In the great hall, Langley was waiting with a folder and an expression I had learned meant good news with a price. Callum leaned against the far column, unreadable as ever, a quiet axis for the room to spin around. He took in my face, then Ellis’s behind me, then the phone still warm in Ellis’s hand. One of Callum’s eyebrows rose a fraction. A question. An offer.
• “Not yet,” I said, passing them both. “Let him run. Some men only understand a lesson when they teach it to themselves first.”
• “Press is still outside,” Langley murmured. “You wanted noon and restraint. You delivered.”
• “Restraint’s over,” I said. “We’ll do interviews on our terms this afternoon, and depositions on theirs tonight.”
• Callum fell into step beside me, not touching, never crowding. “What do you need?”
• “A list,” I said. “Everyone who signed something the week my grandfather died. Everyone who looked away. Everyone who thought I’d be grateful to come back small.” I stopped in the doorway and turned so they both saw exactly what I meant. “I want them lined up in the order they fall.”
• Langley nodded, already moving. Callum’s mouth tipped in that not-smile that meant a plan had just chosen a direction.
• Behind us, Ellis’s footsteps hurried down the corridor toward whatever lawyer picked up on the first ring. He would cry again tonight. He would swear again tomorrow. And he would keep scheming because greed learns faster than guilt.
• Let him.
• I had learned something too.
• They buried me and called it mercy.
• I was done being merciful.