Chapter 106 Celine Listens

Celine replayed the recording because punishment was easier when she chose the instrument herself.

The courthouse had given her a private consultation room with no windows, 4 gray chairs, a dead plant, and a box of tissues placed with institutional optimism on the table. The room smelled faintly of toner and old carpet. It was not built for postpartum women, frightened mothers, or wives who had just heard their husband’s contempt played in public. It was built for containing people until the next name was called.

Her phone lay on the table. The audio file was not supposed to be on it. It was not the court exhibit – she did not have that. She had the earlier transcript summary Dario’s side had circulated months ago in clipped, lawyerly language, the one that described the wrong call as private emotional discussion following medical-family crisis. She had skimmed it then and allowed the phrase to comfort her because it turned ugliness into weather. Private. Emotional. Crisis. All 3 words had covered her like cashmere.

Now she had the sound. Not a file. Memory. Dario’s voice through the cheap speaker in the conference room. She is frightened. If she thinks she has options… Afterward she can be near enough if she behaves. A version she can live with. The baby is Armitage. That is what matters

now.

Celine pressed the heel of her hand to her sternum. Her body was still recovering too, though no one in her family used the word recovering unless it could be made flattering. Five days since the emergency delivery. No, 4 days and change. The hours had blurred into pumping schedules, special-care updates, antiseptic, and her father’s aides asking for signatures while her son slept under blue-white light with wires taped to skin too small for the world.

Her son was not a strategy. She knew that. She knew it most fiercely when Mathias entered the special-care nursery and looked first at monitors as if numbers were easier to love than a child.

The nurses were kinder than the flowers. They taught her where to warm her hands before touching him, how to rest 1 finger against his foot without overstimulating him, how to read the tiny startle that meant enough. No one in that room cared whether her name looked stable in a society photograph. They cared whether he tolerated the next feed. That kind of care made the rest of her life look obscene. But knowing one innocent thing had not made her innocent.

The door opened without a knock. Mathias Vey stepped in. He had removed his overcoat

the only concession to courthouse discomfort.

His suit looked untouched by the morning, by the recording, by Celine leaving the room before Dario could gather her back into shape.

“You should not have walked out,” he said.

Celine laughed once. It was an ugly sound-too thin, not useful.

Mathias closed the door behind him. “Emotion in public is expensive p>

“Regret too p>

“More so. Regret spends money without buying anything p>

She looked at him. There were childhood memories in which he had seemed large because she was small. Later, he seemed large because other adults made room for him. Today he looked exactly his size and more dangerous for it – a man in his early 60s with careful hands, a good tailor, and no visible grief.

“Did you know he said it that way?” she asked.

“Dario says many things badly when cornered p>

MoboReader – Read Book & Story

1/4

AQ

INSTALL

hapter 106

KEKA

“That is not an answer p>

“It is the only useful answer p>

Celine picked up her phone, then set it down again before her hand betrayed the tremor. The special-care app had sent 2 updates during the hearing. Her son’s oxygen support unchanged. Feeding tolerance under review. Weight loss within expected range. Words that sounded tady because no app had to show the size of his fingers curled around nothing.

Nico’s school had sent a message too-reminder about Friday’s winter concert rescheduling. An ordinary child’s ordinary life tapping gently on the glass while every adult in his family tried to keep scandal from fogging it.

Nico was 6. He had asked if Noa was his sister. Celine had not answered. She had told herself silence protected him. Now she wondered ho many protections were only rooms where adults hid words until children tripped over them.

“He said it because of me,” she said.

Mathias sat across from her. “He said it because Aveline Ashby threatened a structure p>

“No.” Celine heard the recording again and hated the precision of it. “He said it because I needed her to be less than me p>

Her father regarded her with mild distaste, as if she had spilled something on the table.

“You are his wife p>

“I know what I am p>

“Then act accordingly p>

She looked at the tissue box. It was unopened. She wanted to open it just to ruin the ridiculous smooth triangle of the first tissue, but spite at paper was beneath even this hour.

“He made her sound dangerous,” Celine said. “Frightened. Unstable. Someone who would harm her own baby to prove a point.” ノ

“And you believed him p>

Not a question. That was the cruelty of Mathias he did not spare her by pretending she had been fooled.

“I wanted to p>

“Good. Then you understand the cost of wanting p>

The consultation room hummed with building air. Somewhere outside, a clerk called a case number. The world had a vulgar commitment to continuing.

Celine closed her eyes. In the conference room, Aveline had returned with the baby asleep against her chest. Noa Ashby had made a small sound, not even a cry, and the entire room had adjusted around it. Priya had moved her folder. Isolde had shifted the bag. Bennett had moved the chair only after Aveline looked toward it.

It should have looked pathetic – Aveline in a courthouse room 6 days postpartum, milk on her shirt, face pale, asking a judge to hear the least humiliating part of her own humiliation. Instead it had looked warm. Not soft. Warm. There was a difference Celine had not understood until she saw it arranged around a woman she had tried to erase.

Noa’s hat had slipped over one ear. Bennett had noticed and done nothing because it was not his hand to fix. Aveline had fixed it without thanking anyone for letting her remain the mother. That, more than the recording, had lodged under Celine’s ribs.

Dario’s family rooms were polished, staffed, planned, photographed. Her own postpartum room at St. Orla had flowers selected by aides and a blanket embroidered with the wrong shade of blue because someone had ordered before the delivery changed the schedule. Her son’s

MoboReader – Read Book & Story

INSTALL

2/4

KYKA

< Chapter 106

incubator had labels, visitor restrictions, consultants, family-office callers. Aveline had a stained wrap and a circle of people who knew which

boundaries not to cross.

Celine hated her for making that look richer. Then hated herself because hatred had become reflex, not judgment. The hate had been useful once. It had let Celine stand beside Dario at the donor event and look composed. It had let her sign papers with words like consistency and continuity and believe the ink was cleaner because it protected children. It had let her sleep while another woman learned which exits belonged to her. Usefulness was not innocence either.

“If I had known he loved her,” she said.

Mathias’s mouth flattened. “Do not cheapen this with romance p>

“I am not p>

“Good. Love is irrelevant p>

Celine opened her eyes. “Is it p>

“Dario wanted a child and a quiet arrangement. Aveline wanted legitimacy she was never promised publicly. You wanted your family intact. Everyone wanted. Wanting is not evidence p>

“It seems to become evidence when Aveline does it p>

Her father looked at her for a long moment. There. That had been too much.

“You are tired,” he said.

“My son is in special care. I am allowed to be tired p>

“You are allowed to recover. You are not allowed to disassemble your position because Dario spoke inelegantly on a bad call p>

“Inelegantly p>

“Yes p>

Celine almost smiled – not with amusement, but with the strange cold wonder of recognizing that her father’s world had a word for every

harm except harm.

The door opened again. Dario this time. He entered without asking because husbands with lawyers rarely learned to knock. His eyes went first to Mathias, then to Celine. That order told her more than his face did.

“We need to return,” Dario said.

“Do we p>

“Farrow is arguing exclusion. If you remain outside, it reads as division p>

“It is division p>

His face changed, barely. At the beginning of their marriage, she had thought Dario’s restraint meant depth. Later, she learned it meant calculation. Now she could not tell whether the hurt under his control belonged to her, to Aveline, to Noa, or to the structure cracking around all of them. Possibly he did not know either.

“Celine,” he said softly. “Not like this p>

She almost laughed again. Not here. Not now. Not like this. The family motto of men who preferred harm scheduled.

MoboReader – Read Book & Story

INSTALL

3/4

< Chapter 106

Mathias stood. “You will both return. The question is not whether Dario phrased a private concern attractively. The question is whether Aline- Ashby will be permitted to turn a selective recording into maternal sainthood and use a funder as shield p>

“Bennett did not speak,” Celine said.

Dario’s gaze moved sharply to her. “What p>

“In there. He did not speak for her p>

“That is his performance p>

“Perhaps.” Celine stood too quickly and felt pain low in her abdomen, bright enough to make the table blur. She steadied herself with 2 fingers on the chair back and refused both men’s movement toward her. “Or perhaps it is what restraint looks like when it is not just another strategy p>

Dario stared at her. Mathias said, “Enough p>

Celine picked up her phone. The special-care app lit again.

Feeding held. Physician review at 1:00 PM.

Her son needed a mother who could walk back into St. Orla without shaking. Nico needed an answer no adult had taught her how to give. Nda Ashby needed nothing from Celine except distance and the end of signatures placed where they did not belong.

Regret was expensive. Mathias was right about that. For the first time, Celine wondered whether expense was the only language her family had ever taught her.

Dario reached for the door. “Come,” he said. Not please. Not can you. Come.

Celine looked at his hand on the knob and heard his voice through the speaker again. Near enough if she behaves.

She followed him back toward the hearing room because she did not yet know how to refuse in a way that protected her children.

But at the threshold, she stopped. Dario turned, impatient now.

And Celine said, “Do not ever use that voice on me again p>

End of chapter

4/4

A

MoboReader – Read Book & Story

INSTALL

Tai Jun

Tai Jun is a dreamer and storyteller who believes the sky is never the limit. He spends most of his time with his friend Lian, chasing new horizons and crafting tales that soar beyond boundaries.