270.🎂 THE BIRTHDAY LIE THAT STOLE HIS MOTHER

Chapter 05 - The Woman in Red

Victoria chose a quiet restaurant on the East Side, not because she wanted privacy but because Alexander disliked making scenes in front of waiters. He recognized the calculation as soon as he saw the table she'd reserved, a corner half-hidden by a potted lemon tree. She stood when he came in, then sat down again when he did not kiss her.

She was wearing a pale gray blouse. He had never seen her look so unadorned. The woman in red at the gala had been clever, polished, impossible to interrupt; this woman had bitten the skin beside her thumbnail until it bled.

"You sent money to Julian," he said, before the waiter could offer drinks.

Victoria's face settled into caution. "I approved a transfer I was told was already authorized."

"You never approve transfers. Your job is public relations."

"It was an emergency reserve. Julian said it was needed to cover the pension shortfall before the vote."

"What pension shortfall?"

She moved her glass an inch from the edge of the table. "I don't know the amount."

"But you knew there was one."

"Six months ago I found an old company report. At first I thought it was an accounting mistake. Then Julian told me what would happen if it became public. Thousands of families would think their pensions were gone. Your shares would be disputed. The shipping contracts would collapse. He said you would be blamed for the things Carlo did."

"So you helped him."

She looked down. "Yes."

It was the first answer she'd given him that did not have an escape built into it. Alexander felt an unexpected tenderness for her, followed by disgust with himself. She had betrayed him, and he was still noticing that she hadn't eaten.

"Why refuse Margaret's letter?"

"She said Sofia had proof about your birth. I wanted time to find out what it was. When I went to Margaret, she was furious. I offered to pay her rent. I thought it would sound practical."

"It sounded like my father."

Victoria flinched. "I know."

For three years he'd believed Victoria was the one person who saw him outside his father's shadow. She could sit beside him during long meetings and touch his knee when he grew impatient. She knew he disliked birthdays, though she didn't know why. Or perhaps she had known all along.

"Did you ever love me?" he asked.

"Of course I did."

"I need to hear something that doesn't begin with 'of course.'"

She swallowed. "I loved you most when you were trying not to be him. I told myself that was enough to justify what I hid. It wasn't."

They sat while two meals cooled between them. Victoria finally explained how she'd first heard Sofia's name. Her mother, Helen Lane, had worked in Russo Shipping's payroll department in the 1990s. She left after an internal inquiry, taking nothing but a box of old time sheets. When the company announced the Harborside redevelopment, Helen began writing letters about missing pension credits. Julian answered one of them before Alexander ever saw it.

"Helen?" Alexander asked. "Your mother was one of our payroll clerks?"

"She was there twenty-seven years. You shook her hand once at a holiday dinner. You wouldn't remember."

He remembered a woman who'd corrected the pronunciation of a Hungarian pastry. He had enjoyed speaking to her because she was the only person at the table who didn't call him sir. Now he wondered what Victoria had thought as she watched him play the gracious employer's son.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I got the job on my own and didn't want to spend the rest of my life proving it. And because I knew what Carlo did to people who asked about the pension funds."

She hesitated. "There's another reason. Helen told me about Sofia long before I met you. I thought it was an old rumor. The first time your mother came to the house, I realized Helen had been right."

"You met my mother on May fourth."

"Yes."

"And the next morning you made me breakfast, kissed me good-bye and discussed the invitation list for my birthday."

Victoria stared at him. "Yes."

The waiter asked whether they wanted dessert. Neither answered. Alexander quietly asked for the check. Paying it felt childish, but he wanted no more debts between them, not even for coffee. He remembered the summer Victoria had stayed at his side through Katherine's birthday, a date he could barely speak about. She had bought flowers and left them in the kitchen, not on the grave. She had understood that grief wasn't improved by an audience. He could not convince himself that tenderness like that had been invented.

Outside, the air smelled of wet pavement. Victoria reached for his sleeve. He stepped back. He saw that she understood, and her face crumpled for just an instant before she put it right.

"The ring stays with me," he said. "It was Katherine's."

"I never wanted her ring because it was valuable."

"I believe you. That doesn't mean we can get married."

Victoria put her arms around herself. "Julian has files about you from the years right after Katherine died. The people Carlo had you meet. The loans you approved. He thinks you'll protect your name rather than open the books."

Alexander remembered those years: the whiskey, his father's contempt, the handful of contracts he'd signed without reading because he wanted Carlo to stop calling him soft. He had made people carry the cost of his grief. Some of them might still be paying it.

"I won't protect myself by lying about my mother," he said.

"That's not all he'll ask you to protect."

She took an envelope from her bag. Inside was a copy of a handwritten page from Katherine's diary, dated two years before she died. Victoria explained that she'd found it in a file Julian kept, marked simply K. RUSSO.

It read: I have met Sofia again. She did not blame me for loving the boy. She blamed me for accepting the terms on which I was allowed to love him. I cannot tell the difference anymore.

Alexander held the page beneath the streetlight, seeing Katherine's handwriting waver at the bottom. She had looked after him through every disappointment, then gone to sleep believing she had failed him in a way he hadn't even known to forgive.

"Julian kept this?" he asked.

"There are other pages. I couldn't get them."

"What did he want with my mother's diary?"

Victoria opened her mouth, closed it, and made a choice.

"Because Katherine found out where the missing pension money was going," she said. "She wrote down the names."