Chapter 183 *
Scarlett had been watching from her chair with her hands folded on the table. "The kidnapping was Miranda's idea," she said. "Not Viviana's."
Zelda turned to look at her.
"Miranda arranged the contractors. Miranda paid them. Miranda gave the order." Scarlett's voice was even. "Viviana had nothing to do with it. Whatever you're trying to build here — whatever case you're making about what this family did to you — you're pointing in the wrong direction."
The silence that followed had a different quality than the one before it.
Zelda's jaw tightened. She turned back to Viviana.
"I watched you for years," Zelda said. "I watched the way you went under. I watched the signs — the ones you thought nobody noticed. The way you stopped eating before a bad episode. The way you talked to yourself when you thought you were alone."
Graham moved toward his mother without quite deciding to. Zelda's eyes tracked him and she kept talking.
"The thing about depression," she said, "is that it doesn't actually leave. It just goes quiet for a while. And then the right pressure in the right place, and it comes back."
"Zelda." Graham's voice had dropped to something dangerous.
"You've been in remission for three years," she said to Viviana. "You think that means you're safe. You're not safe. You're just in a quiet period."
Viviana had gone very still.
"You've tried twice," Zelda said. "The pills the first time. Then the second. This whole family spent years walking on eggshells, terrified you'd try again." She paused. "I was never terrified. I was just waiting for you to finish."
The words detonated in the silence.
"That thing that you just said," Graham’s voice was very low. "To our mother."
"She's not my mother." Zelda's voice didn't waver. "She raised a replacement. And since we're already here, since we're already doing this — let's talk about you."
Graham went completely still.
"The decorative piece," Zelda said. "In the east hallway. The one that broke."
A muscle jumped in Graham's jaw.
"I knocked it over," she said. "On purpose. I timed it for when Scarlett was coming around the corner so you'd hear it when she was standing next to it. And you did exactly what I knew you'd do. You didn't ask any questions. You just hit her."
The color drained out of Graham's face.
"You hit your own sister because I needed you to," Zelda said, "and you made it so easy that I almost felt bad about it."
"And you," she turned to Nico. "The piano."
"I told you there was nowhere to put it," she said. "I framed it as a practical problem. A space issue. I knew you'd come up with the solution yourself — I didn't even have to suggest the servant's quarters. I just planted the problem and let you solve it." She paused. "You were very helpful."
Nico said nothing. He looked at his hands, and then, in a movement so small he probably didn't realize he'd done it, he glanced across the room at Scarlett. It lasted less than a second before he looked away again.
Zelda turned back to Lorenzo.
"You," she said, "are the smartest one."
Lorenzo met her eyes without expression.
"That's not a compliment," she added. "The smartest one is the most responsible. You knew something was wrong. You felt it for years. But you were so committed to being fair — to being the one Romano who didn't pick favorites — that you kept overriding your own judgment every time it got inconvenient." She held his gaze. "And then you stood in a room and told your own sister to marry a man she'd never met because it was good for the family."
She tilted her head.
"How much was your fairness worth, Lorenzo? What was the going rate?"
Zelda looked at all of them.
"You want to know why I did it," she said. "All of it. The things in the recordings. The setups. The years of managing all of you."
"I hate this family," Zelda said.
Her voice broke on the word and she didn't stop.
"I hate this house and I hate every year I spent in it and I hate the fact that it's the only home I've ever had." Something was coming apart in her now, and it was not the performance. "I hate that Miranda left me here. I hate that Owen got to leave and I had to stay. I hate that every single person in this room had something real and I had a role to fill and nobody ever—"
She stopped. Started again.
"You want to know what's funny?" Her voice had gone ragged. "None of this was going to matter. I had everything I needed. The shares, the name, the family — I had already won. And then she came back, and I couldn't — I couldn't stop myself from—"
Her hands were shaking.
"I hope you all rot," she said, and then she was screaming it, her voice tearing itself apart on the words. "I hope every single one of you rots. I hope this family burns down to nothing and there's nobody left to remember it ever existed. I hope—"
She was crying so hard the words stopped making sense. She kept going anyway, her voice cracking and breaking and still coming, curses and fragments and things that weren't words at all anymore, just sound, just the raw undirected rage of someone who has finally stopped caring what any of it looks like.
And then, slowly, it ran out.
Her voice dropped. Then dropped again. Then stopped entirely.
Her knees hit the floor. She didn't fight it. She folded down and stayed there, her shoulders shaking, one hand pressed flat against the carpet, and what came out of her now was not anger — the anger was gone, burned through — just grief, ugly and exhausted, the kind that has nowhere left to go.