Everything Victor Said
Chapter 02 - Everything Victor Said
The three bodyguards moved Julian into the study before Ava had even managed to stand up on her own.
She could hear glass being swept somewhere behind her, one of the household staff already working quietly to erase the evidence of the last ten minutes, the way this house had always been so efficient at making its own worst moments disappear.
She didn't want help standing. She waved off the housekeeper who rushed in from the kitchen, waved off the second guard who reached for her elbow, and pulled herself up using the arm of the sofa instead, one hand still pressed low against her belly.
Her whole body ached in ways that had nothing to do with any physical blow. It was the specific exhaustion of adrenaline burning through a body that had spent months, maybe years, quietly bracing for exactly this kind of night without ever fully admitting it was bracing at all.
Her legs were shaking. She sat down hard, breathing through the kind of tight, panicked breath that made Dr. Ruiz's warnings about stress and blood pressure flash through her mind uninvited.
Victor knelt in front of her before he did anything else. Not toward Julian. Toward his daughter.
"Are you hurt," he said. Quiet now. A different voice than the one he'd used two minutes earlier.
"No," Ava said, though her voice cracked on the single word. "He didn't— he never actually—"
"I know," Victor said. "I saw enough."
She looked at him, confused through the tears. "How did you even know to come tonight?"
Victor's jaw tightened. He didn't answer right away, and that hesitation told Ava more than any answer could have.
"We'll talk about that," he said instead. "Right now I need you looked at by your doctor. Tonight, not tomorrow."
Ava looked past him toward the study door, still closed, still holding whatever conversation was happening between her father's men and the man she'd married three years ago believing, foolishly, that love was supposed to feel like safety.
"I'm fine, Dad—"
"You're eight months pregnant and you've been crying and shaking for at least ten minutes that I know of," Victor said. "You're not fine. You're going to let someone confirm that instead of just telling me."
Ava didn't argue further. She was too tired to argue, too hollowed out from adrenaline that had nowhere left to go.
From the study, she could hear Julian's voice rising, pleading with someone, though the words were muffled behind the heavy door.
"What's going to happen to him," she asked.
Victor's expression didn't change. "Everything he thought he had is about to disappear. His name on the company accounts. His access to anything with the Hayes name attached to it. His marriage, if you want it, though I won't push you on that part tonight."
"You can't just—"
"I can," Victor said. "And I already have people confirming exactly how much of what he's been doing this past year has actually been illegal, not just cruel."
Ava's breath caught. "What do you mean, illegal."
Victor looked at her for a long moment, something careful crossing his face, the specific look of a man deciding how much truth a person could hold in one single, terrible night.
"I mean I've had someone watching him for the last four months," he said. "And what they found is considerably worse than what I just walked in on."
Ava stared at her father, feeling the floor tilt slightly beneath her, though nothing in the room had actually moved.
"Four months," she repeated. "You knew something was wrong four months ago, and you didn't tell me?"
Victor's silence answered the question before his mouth ever opened again.
She stared at him, feeling something new settle over the fear of the last hour, something closer to a different kind of betrayal entirely, quieter, but no less real for being quiet.
"How much did you actually know," she asked. "Before tonight."
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"Enough that I should have acted sooner," Victor said finally. "I made a judgment call that I've been questioning every hour since Marcus's phone call this evening. I wanted absolute proof before I tore your marriage apart in front of you. I'm not certain now that was the right choice."
Ava didn't answer. She simply closed her eyes, exhausted, and let her father's guilt sit unanswered in the quiet room, because right now she didn't have the strength left to offer him any comfort about it.
