Page 149 of Vicious Kingdom

“I hate you,” she said, softer than I’d ever heard. “I can’t forgive you. Not for this.”

I nodded, even though she couldn’t see. “I understand.”

The lines were firmly drawn in the sand. The ties were cut.

While part of me, the part that screamed because it was natural to feel for the people who I came from, I felt a rush of calm.

“It was the right thing to do, Mom,” I murmured.

I let the silence stretch, hoping she’d say more, maybe even find some way back to the bond of mother and daughter—between rage and reconciliation.

But then she said, “Goodbye, Anna,” and hung up.

The sound echoed through the muggy air, leaving my side of the conversation unmoored. I lowered the phone, pressed it to my lips, and just breathed. All around me, the Percolator kept humming, jazz spilling out, espresso machines hissing like nothing had changed.

But inside, everything had.

I returned to my table, the manuscript waiting like an accusation or a comfort, I couldn’t decide which. I stared at the notebooks, the triple bullet points, the black ink already starting to bleed from my fingers.

I didn’t regret what I’d written. But I did wish, just for a second, that endings didn’t always have to hurt.

In the wake of the call, the quiet came back meaner than before. It hovered, thick and pulpy, like the aftertaste of burnt grounds on the back of my tongue. I kept the phone pressed to my cheek a moment longer, as if she might change her mind and dial back, say there’d been a mistake, that she’d always been proud of me. But the screen stayed black, cold glass reflecting a face I barely recognized.

I realized I hadn’t moved in fifteen minutes, maybe more. Every muscle in my body was clenched, waiting for a verdict that had already come and gone.

I forced my hands open, let them rest palms up on the table. They looked like someone else’s hands. Not the reporter who’d torn apart a senator’s career, not the failed daughter who’d just been exiled by her own blood. Just hands. I almost laughed.

In the echo of my mother’s words, I heard every other disappointment she’d never said aloud. It struck me then, hard,that I’d never even told them I wrote fiction. Maybe I should’ve been braver. Or maybe I was braver than I knew.

But I didn’t need the old family.

I had something better. Leo—my husband. My other home, the one I’d built brick by uncertain brick, on the ruins of everything my parents thought I should be. He’d been the first person to read the story I started five years ago. He encouraged me and insisted I finish, even when my own voice wavered.

Now I had, in the space of one morning.

I thought about calling him, just to hear him say “proud of you” the way he always did, like it was as easy as breathing. Instead, I drew the notebook toward me, thumbed the page with the three bullet points, and wrote a fourth underneath:

• Family is what you choose

I stared at the words, heart thumping. Maybe I’d tattoo them on my arm, just to remind myself the next time I decided to light a match and burn my bridges for good.

The barista called out another order, her voice bright and ordinary. Someone raised their voice in an animated conversation. I closed my eyes and let the noise fill the emptiness, not as a shield, but as a promise that life kept going.

I squared my shoulders, breathed in deep, and stood up.

Somewhere in the world, the story I’d written was already setting fire to the right people.

And if it turned my name into a curse? At least I’d earned it.

Chapter 53 – Annaliese

Ihovered beside the front door, key in the latch, with my laptop clamped to my chest, sweat already blooming in my armpits. I could smell the carpet’s recent vacuuming, the burn of citrus cleaner on stainless steel, and the quiet buzz of privacy. My mother’s voice, still ringing like a fire alarm in the back of my skull. Traitor. The city had already moved on, of course. That was the way of media: bleed today, rot tomorrow, wrap fish the day after. But there was always the aftershock. Always the stares, the tremors of gossip. Always the knowledge that there was a grenade, but this time I walked away before the shrapnel landed.

He’s going to love the story.Excitement pulsed through my veins.

I opened the door, ready to embrace my future.

He was in the kitchen, hunched over a tiny espresso cup with one hand pinching the bridge of his nose. A fresh stubble shadowed his jaw. His shirt was three buttons open, and there was a fine, unmistakable tremor in the hand that held the black swill. I could tell he hadn’t slept. The air was thick with the smellof the grounds and something sharper underneath. Adrenaline, maybe, or the dry metallic scent of a body in crisis.