Chapter 13
Dominic requested mediation eighteen months after Clara’s unexpected return.
Their divorce case was already underway.
Leo did not attend.
Rachel sat in the next room.
Dominic looked thinner.
Still controlled.
Still handsome.
Still capable of making silence feel like pressure.
Clara no longer mistook that for strength.
He spoke first.
“I should have stopped my mother.”
“Yes.”
“I should have warned you.”
“Yes.”
“I should never have allowed Brooke to record him.”
“Yes.”
Dominic looked at his hands.
“I kept telling myself I wasn’t doing what they were doing.”
Clara waited.
“I never told him to sit on the floor.”
“No.”
“I never told Mom to take his shoes.”
“No.”
“I told Brooke nobody touched him.”
“Yes.”
He looked up.
“I thought that mattered.”
“It does.”
He seemed surprised.
Clara continued.
“It means you were not the person doing every cruel thing.”
He swallowed.
“It does not mean you protected him.”
That landed.
Dominic nodded.
Then Clara asked:
“When did Westbridge become more important than us?”
He shook his head.
“It never was.”
“Wrong answer.”
He closed his eyes.
Clara continued.
“Because for those days, it was.”
Dominic’s voice cracked.
“I thought it was temporary.”
“Exactly.”
“I thought if Mom got sixty days, we could refinance Westbridge. I could repay my loan. Then I’d stop all of it.”
“And Leo?”
“He’d come home.”
“He was already home.”
Silence.
Clara leaned forward.
“You keep describing the end of the plan as restoration.”
Dominic looked at her.
“But you needed to damage something first so you could restore it.”
His eyes filled.
“I know.”
“No. You know now.”
That distinction mattered.
Then Dominic told her why he had tolerated the behavior.
He was afraid Clara’s no-vote would expose how much money he had personally put into Westbridge.
He had told Clara the loan was only $500,000.
It was $2.8 million.
Why lie?
Pride.
He had criticized Victoria for years for emotional attachment to old family properties.
Then secretly financed one.
If Westbridge failed, Clara would see he had become exactly what he mocked.
“So you risked our son seeing it instead.”
Dominic looked sick.
“Yes.”
There was no affair.
No secret second family.
No dramatic hidden paternity.
Just a man who became so afraid of admitting a financial mistake that he let his mother turn his child into leverage.
May you like
Clara found that more believable.
And harder to forgive.
