Free Web NovelChapter 68: Chapter 68 Settled everything
_Rowena’s POV_
The first two confessors came forward before dinner.
I hadn’t expected it to be the kitchen stewards. Of all the people in that line yesterday, they had been the quietest and the most unremarkable. They had stood in the middle and given nothing away. But they came to my study together, which told me they had talked it over between themselves and decided together, and they stood in front of my desk and said they were ready to tell me everything.
I told them to sit down.
They talked for a long time.
Most of what they said confirmed things I already knew or had pieced together. But then one of them, the older of the two leaned forward slightly and said there was something else. Something he hadn’t seen in any document because it had never been written down.
He told me about Patrick’s family.
Patrick had been the Ashthorne family driver for years. Quiet and reliable, the kind of person who became invisible through sheer consistency. He drove, he maintained the vehicles, he stayed in his lane and did his job well.
What I hadn’t known was that six weeks ago, Alice had moved his wife and two children. Quietly. No announcement, no explanation given to Patrick. Just gone one morning, and Patrick had been told very simply that they were safe and would remain safe as long as he cooperated with certain requests.
He had been cooperating ever since. Sick with it, from what Behn described. Doing what he was asked and saying nothing because he had no other option.
I sat very still while he finished telling me.
Then I asked for the location.
He gave it to me without hesitating.
I sent Kasper within the hour with four of the Ashthorne guards and instructions to bring Patrick’s family back safely and without drawing attention. I told him to tell Patrick directly, before they left, so he would know it was done.
Kasper was back by nightfall.
Patrick’s wife and children were shaken but unharmed. They had been kept in a property on the outer edge of the city, comfortable enough on the surface, watched constantly beneath it. His wife had not been told why they were there or when they would be allowed to leave.
When Patrick saw them walk through the door he didn’t say anything for a long moment. He just stood there. Then he pressed his hand over his face and turned away briefly.
I gave them privacy and walked back to my study.
I called the remaining stewards together the following morning, including the two who had not nodded in the hall.
Both of them came forward this time.
I listened to each of them. I asked questions where I needed clarification and I let people finish without interrupting. It took most of the morning but by the time it was done I had a clear and complete picture of everything Alice had built inside this household.
What struck me, sitting with all of it at once, was the pattern.
Every single person Alice had recruited, every steward, every staff member she had turned, had been reached through the same mechanism. Not greed alone but vulnerability. She had found the specific crack in each person and pressed on it carefully. Debt was the most common one. Three of the stewards had serious financial problems that Alice had quietly offered to resolve in exchange for cooperation. Two others had family members with medical situations they couldn’t afford to manage.
One woman had a brother connected to something he shouldn’t have been connected to and Alice had made it clear she could make that problem larger or smaller depending on which way the woman chose.
She hadn’t bought loyalty. She had purchased people at their weakest points and called it the same thing.
I looked at the group of them and thought about it.
"I told you I would let you go," I said. "That offer stands. Every one of you is free to leave this household today with no charges and no record following you." I paused. "But I want to say something else before you decide."
I told them what I had observed. The debts, the pressures, the specific vulnerabilities Alice had used as handles. I told them I understood that most of them had not come to this through malice but through fear and desperation, and that those were different things. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com
"If you want to stay," I said, "I will help clear what needs clearing. The debts, the situations, whatever Alice was holding over you. I’m not doing it to buy your loyalty. I’m doing it because it’s the right thing and because this household functions better when the people in it aren’t being quietly strangled by things they can’t say out loud."
The room was quiet.
Most of them stayed.
Alice was placed under full house arrest by the end of the day.
No visitors. No outgoing messages. No access to anyone outside the walls. The guards were posted at her door in rotation and her movements within the household were restricted to her rooms. She was treated with basic courtesy because I was not interested in cruelty, but every avenue she had used to reach her external network was closed.
She said nothing when the restrictions were put in place. She just looked at me with an expression I couldn’t fully read and said nothing.
I held her gaze for a moment and then I left.
Walking back through the corridor afterward, I took stock quietly of where things stood. The stewards had been addressed. The external network was broken. Patrick’s family was home. Rita’s full confession was documented and secured. The internal structure Alice had spent years building inside this household had been dismantled piece by piece and what remained was clean.
For the first time in a long time, the threat inside these walls was gone.
I stopped in the corridor and stood still for a moment.
My ribs still ached. My left arm was healing but it wasn’t finished. The deeper reserves of strength that Kyra and I shared had been heavily drawn on over the past weeks and needed real time to rebuild properly.
I had a competition coming.
I needed to be ready for it and I was currently not ready for it, which meant the next priority was simple and non-negotiable.
Rest, recover and rebuild.
I went to find Kasper and told him I was taking myself off active operations for the time being.
He looked at me for a long moment like he was waiting for the second half of the sentence.
"That’s it," I said. "I’m resting."
He looked genuinely relieved.
I ignored how much that told me about how I’d looked lately and went to lie down.
