Page 148 of Vicious Kingdom

I flinched, though no one else in the café even looked up. “It wasn’t done to hurt you. Or Dad’s memory. You know that, right?”

She laughed, bitter and small. “Don’t patronize me. I read the whole thing. It’s destroying our legacy! He needs to recant. Now!”

I tried to find a patch of steady ground in the conversation. “It’s a true report, Mom. Everything is sourced. Triple-checked. If you want, I can send you the court filings, the email threads—”

“Do you hear yourself?” Her volume spiked. I could picture her in the kitchen, pacing around the butcher block island, white-knuckling a martini glass and checking the clock every five seconds. “Your husband’s reporter cast your dead father as some cartoon villain. Did it ever occur to you to stop him? Where’s your loyalty to our family?”

The truth was on the tip of my tongue. I didn’t owe the Hertz name squat. For the sake of any frayed bond to the only parent I had left, I swallowed the urge to defend the article. The piece held Voss to the same standard as every other crooked politician. That was the point, wasn’t it? Impartiality. Justice for the people the politician hurt and stories my father’s covered up.

“Voss is a bad man. And Dad had his chance,” I said. “He’s had his chance for twenty years. You think he would’ve told the truth if I called him last week, just to double-check?”

There was silence, the kind that expands until you want to claw your skin off just to break it. In the background, I caught the distant whirr of a blender, and somewhere nearer, a baby squealed.

“Anna. He’s your father.”

She didn’t have to say more. Family first. Well…Leo was my family now.

“I wrote the article, Mom.”

Silence ticked through the line.

“I found the evidence,” I continued. “I only wanted to make sure that scum never was elected to office. To make sure he never hurts anyone again.”

Now I was the one who’d set fire to the wagons.

I pressed the phone tighter to my ear, as if I could crowd out everything except her voice. “I’m not going to apologize for doing the right thing.”

She exhaled, shaky and wet. “You traitor.”

I ignored the ache in my chest, dragging my mug to a semi-private corner near the window. The sunlight was starting to break through, bleaching the rain streaks into silver lines.

I hunched over, hand cupped around the phone. “You knew the kinds of things Hertz Media covered. It wasn’t anything personal—”

She snorted. “You still said Alfred bought witnesses, you still called him ‘the white-collar predator.’” Her breath hitched. “Did you even think about how it would feel to read that about your own family?”

Of course I had. I’d lost sleep over it, second-guessed every adjective, every quote. But nothing changed the facts.

“Mom, I can send you my notes. The interview tapes. I can prove it’s all real.”

A new edge crept into her voice, quieter but so much meaner. “You think I care about your notes? You think anyone reads footnotes?”

I clutched the mug, knuckles whitening. “The truth matters. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t bother.”

I thought she’d hang up then, that I’d get the cold radio silence I half-wanted, half-feared. Instead, she softened for a moment, a single feather-light touch of the old warmth. “You were always too honest, Anna. Even as a girl.”

No…I wasn’t.But that changed. Ever since returning from Germany, I grew stronger with each day. Knowing someone who cared for me had my back was the biggest strength in my arsenal.

I swallowed. “Someone has to be.”

She didn’t answer. I heard the sound of her glasses being set on the counter, a muffled click.

“He wasn’t the monster you painted him as,” she said, barely audible now. “You know that.”

I didn’t reply. There wasn’t a script for this part.

“Your uncle called,” she continued. “He wants to talk to you, but I told him to wait. You’re probably busy. You always are.”

I stared out at the sidewalk, at the people moving through the rain, all of them with places to go and stories to keep to themselves.