Chapter 13
Sabina requested one mediated meeting.
Magnus refused at first.
Nora told him not to confuse refusal with strength.
“I don’t owe her conversation.”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because you keep asking everyone else why she did it.”
That irritated him.
It was also true.
The meeting happened in Katherine’s office.
Lawyers present.
No Lottie.
No private security behind Magnus’s chair.
Sabina looked different without diamonds and a yellow gown.
Still elegant.
Less untouchable.
She spoke first.
“I never meant to hurt Lottie.”
Magnus stared.
“You locked her in a dark passage.”
“I meant physically.”
“Ah.”
His voice stayed quiet.
“That makes it much better.”
Sabina looked down.
“I thought she was safe.”
“She was seven.”
“I could hear if she called.”
“You were in a ballroom.”
Silence.
Magnus continued.
“How did it start?”
Sabina knew what he meant.
“The parties?”
“Yes.”
She looked embarrassed.
“She wouldn’t stay upstairs.”
Magnus did not speak.
“She interrupted dinners. Asked for you. Came downstairs barefoot. Helena let her do whatever she wanted.”
“Helena was dead.”
Sabina flinched.
Magnus continued.
“You competed with a dead woman through a child.”
Sabina’s eyes filled.
“I was trying to build a place in that house.”
“So you removed the person who already had one.”
She looked away.
“Yes.”
At first she locked Lottie in the passage only briefly.
Ten minutes.
Twenty.
The child cried.
Sabina discovered nobody heard through the thick walls.
That should have horrified her.
Instead it made the method convenient.
Then the financial pressure began.
Her hospitality investments lost value.
Banks demanded additional collateral.
Magnus refused to rescue one project.
“Because it was bad.”
Sabina stared at him.
“You made me beg.”
“I told you to sell.”
“You had billions.”
“Not yours.”
There it was.
She hated that boundary.
Not because Magnus left her poor.
He did not.
She hated that Helena’s collection sat untouched for Lottie while Sabina’s own investments failed.
“I looked at those rooms,” she said, “and there were millions of dollars no one even wore.”
Magnus answered:
“They weren’t yours.”
“I know that now.”
“No.”
His voice hardened.
“You knew then.”
She began crying.
Correct.
The theft did not arise from confusion.
It arose from entitlement.
Sabina admitted the first replica was supposed to be temporary.
She sold one piece to solve a liquidity problem.
Planned to buy it back.
The investment deteriorated further.
She sold another.
Then realized replicas could keep the loss invisible.
Once she had crossed that line, the insurance idea followed.
If she could eventually make the missing pieces look like the result of security failures, she might recover enough money to restore the trust before anyone understood what happened.
Magnus frowned.
“Restore it?”
“That was the first idea.”
“Using insurance money.”
“Yes.”
“After selling the originals.”
“Yes.”
“You understand that’s still theft.”
“I understand now.”
Again.
Magnus shook his head.
“No. Stop saying now.”
Sabina fell silent.
She had understood every time she fabricated a transfer.
Every time she commissioned a replica.
Every time she staged a vulnerability.
Every time she hid Lottie.
Every time she lied to Owen.
Understanding had never been the problem.
Permission was.
She had kept granting it to herself.
Magnus asked:
“Why Nora?”
“I needed three hours.”
“For what?”
“To move two pieces and replace the inventory packet.”
“And then?”
“I was going to let her out.”
Magnus stared at her.
“As if that makes confinement temporary instead of criminal.”
Sabina looked down.
Then:
“I didn’t know Lottie was in the adjoining section until later.”
“Why was she there tonight?”
Sabina swallowed.
“Because she came downstairs again.”
There it was.
After all the complexity—
insurance.
Replicas.
Security.
Millions.
Fraud.
The child’s confinement still came down to something brutally ordinary.
Sabina did not want her around.
Magnus stood.
The meeting was finished.
Sabina looked up.
“Do you hate me?”
He stopped.
“No.”
She seemed surprised.
Magnus continued.
May you like
“Hate would make you too important to what happens next.”
Then he left.
