The Choice Ava Had to Make
Chapter 08 - The Choice Ava Had to Make
The footage Marcus pulled up had been recorded eight months earlier, buried in an archived server nobody had thought to check until now.
Ava recognized the office immediately, Julian's private study, the same room three men in black suits had escorted him into the night before, the same room he'd once told her was strictly off limits, even to her, because of sensitive company documents.
It showed Julian, alone in his office, on a call with someone whose voice had been carefully cut from the recording, though his own words were perfectly clear.
*"I don't care how you get the Okafor file. I want it before the baby's born. Once there's a child in the picture, Victor won't risk any scandal touching this family's name. That's my leverage, and I intend to use it."*
Ava watched the recording twice, feeling something in her chest go cold and then, unexpectedly, entirely clear.
She thought about the night he'd first suggested trying for a baby, the way he'd framed it as something he wanted so badly he could barely wait, how she'd cried happy tears at the time, believing it meant he loved her enough to want to build something permanent together.
"He planned this before I was even pregnant," she said slowly. "This was never really about controlling me. It was always about controlling the company, using me and this baby as the mechanism."
She felt sick, thinking of every tender moment of the pregnancy she'd believed was genuine affection, every hand on her belly, every whispered promise about the life they'd build for their daughter, all of it apparently calculated from the very beginning.
"That appears to be an accurate reading," Marcus said carefully.
Ava felt something shift inside her, grief for the version of her marriage she'd once believed in, replaced by a specific, hardening clarity about exactly what she was actually dealing with.
"I want to make a decision," she told her father, "and I want you to actually listen to it instead of managing it for me the way you've been managing everything else since last night."
Victor nodded slowly. "I'm listening."
"I don't want Julian bought off, or quietly settled with, or handled the way you handled Preston Okafor forty years ago," Ava said. "I want this done properly. Charges. A real investigation. Whatever it costs this family's reputation, I want the truth on record, completely, rather than another confidentiality agreement burying something that matters."
She sat up straighter as she said it, feeling something steady itself inside her chest for the first time since the night before, a clarity that had nothing to do with fear anymore.
Victor was quiet a long moment, something moving behind his eyes that looked, to Ava, like genuine reckoning rather than simple agreement.
"Even regarding Preston Okafor," he said. "Even if that comes out too."
"Especially regarding Preston Okafor," Ava said. "I don't want to raise this baby inside a family that only tells the truth when it's convenient. I've lived inside that kind of half-truth for three years already, Dad. I'm done living inside it."
Victor nodded slowly, something that looked almost like pride crossing his tired face.
"Then we do this properly," he said. "All of it. Starting with a phone call I should have made forty-one years ago."
Marcus's phone rang before Victor could reach for his own. He answered, listened for a long moment, and his face went very still.
Victor was already on his feet, watching Marcus's expression shift from professional calm into something considerably more urgent.
May you like
"That was the hospital," Marcus said, turning to Ava. "Dr. Ruiz needs you there immediately. Your blood pressure readings from this morning's home monitor just came back critical."
Ava's hand went instinctively to her belly, the room tilting slightly around her, every ounce of the morning's careful, righteous clarity replaced instantly by a different, more urgent kind of fear.
