Chapter 16
Warren requested one final meeting.
I granted it because Celeste wanted to attend.
Not Preston.
He refused.
That mattered too.
We met at Lake House.
Warren looked older.
No entourage.
No son.
No wife.
No marriage alliance left to leverage.
He stared at Celeste.
“You won.”
She laughed.
“I lost twenty years.”
He looked away.
Good.
Then he turned toward me.
“You think your family is different?”
“No.”
That surprised him.
“Every family can become yours if nobody challenges what power thinks it deserves.”
Celeste looked at me.
I continued.
“Marconi is not immune because I’m nicer than you.”
I was not always nice.
That was not the point.
“What matters is whether people below me can say no and survive it.”
Warren scoffed.
“That is weakness.”
Celeste smiled.
“There he is.”
Same man.
No lesson learned.
Fine.
Not every villain needs redemption.
Warren asked whether Celeste would ever return.
“No.”
“Will Preston?”
She answered for him.
“That’s his choice.”
Warren hated that answer more than hatred.
Choice.
The one currency he spent his life confiscating from other people.
We left him at Lake House.
Not imprisoned.
Not threatened.
Just irrelevant to our decisions.
Outside, Celeste breathed cold air and looked toward the water.
“You know what’s strange?”
“What?”
“I used to dream about escaping this place.”
She smiled faintly.
“Now I can leave whenever I want.”
That was the entire difference.
Not distance.
Permission that belonged to herself.
I understood why she came back.
May you like
Not to face Warren.
To prove the door no longer required anyone else to open it.
