Chapter 12
Felice returned my ring after six weeks.
Not in person.
Courier.
No letter.
I respected that.
Then another envelope arrived.
For Anwen.
I did not touch it.
She opened it at her apartment.
Later she told me what mattered.
Felice admitted intercepting the first letter.
Writing both replies.
Arranging Cedar House.
Taking wages.
Ordering the move.
Planning to dismiss Anwen after the wedding.
No excuses until the final paragraph.
There she wrote:
I kept telling myself Theo needed stability. The truth is I wanted to be the person Duncan thanked for bringing him home.
There.
The whole thing.
Not motherhood.
Authorship.
She wanted control over the reveal.
The gratitude.
The future memory.
One day Duncan would say:
Felice found my son.
Felice saved him.
Felice gave him back.
Anwen would disappear from the heroic version.
I asked:
“Are you answering?”
“No.”
Good.
“You?”
“No.”
Also good.
Felice did not need our responses to make the apology real.
Months later, I heard she had left her mother’s social circle and taken a quieter apartment across town.
No dramatic downfall.
No poverty.
No transformation I could verify.
Her life became hers.
Mine moved on.
That was enough.
Some people expect Mafia consequences to always involve blood.
Too easy.
For Felice, consequence meant losing the future she tried to secure by controlling everyone inside it.
No marriage.
No Wycliffe house.
No role in Theo’s life.
May you like
No story where she became the generous woman who saved him.
Reality denied her every part she tried to script.
