Chapter 7 - Her Name on the Lease
The apartment had a narrow kitchen, noisy pipes, and a window overlooking a bakery.
Sienna loved it immediately.
Lydia warned her to inspect the water pressure.
Mara reminded her to review the lease.
Cillian asked whether she wanted help moving.
Nobody asked why she needed a place of her own when so many people could offer better accommodations.
She signed her name carefully.
Her right hand still ached, so the letters looked uneven.
She stared at them afterward.
The landlord waited.
“Everything all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “Everything’s all right.”
The words were not entirely true.
They did not have to be.
She had begun working part-time for a small preservation firm. Before Edmund pulled her into foundation duties, she had completed a degree in architectural history and wanted to restore old civic buildings.
He called it a hobby.
The firm called it relevant experience.
Her first assignment involved cataloging decorative plasterwork in a neglected theater.
She spent three hours on a ladder and came home dusty, exhausted, and happier than she had been in years.
Cillian arrived carrying groceries.
She opened the door and laughed.
“What?”
“You look shocked.”
“There’s plaster in your hair.”
“It’s professional.”
“I assumed.”
He cooked badly.
She discovered this while he burned onions in a pan she had owned for less than a week.
“You said you could make dinner.”
“I can arrange dinner.”
“That’s different.”
“I’m learning that.”
They ordered pizza and ate beside the window.
For a while, they discussed nothing serious.
The bakery downstairs.
Her difficult supervisor.
A ridiculous argument Lydia had started with a parking meter.
Then Cillian grew quiet.
“What?”
He set down his glass.
“I’ve been asked to provide testimony concerning transactions connected to your father’s review.”
“Will you?”
“Yes.”
“Will it expose things about your own companies?”
“Probably.”
Sienna studied his face.
There was no pleasure in it.
No image of a powerful man enjoying an enemy’s downfall.
Only fatigue.
And decision.
“Thank you for telling me.”
“I thought you should hear it from me.”
She nodded.
A month later, the financial case against Edmund expanded.
Margaux faced questions about accounts and documents she had handled. Martin’s cooperation did not erase his own conduct, and his attorney negotiated while he continued providing records.
Phoebe gave a formal statement.
Nobody escaped merely because they had finally become useful.
That mattered to Sienna.
It would have been easy to replace one family myth with another.
The good sister.
The bad mother.
The ruined father.
Real people were harder.
Phoebe had helped her.
Phoebe had also harmed her.
Martin had preserved evidence.
Martin had also concealed wrongdoing for years.
Cillian was changing.
Cillian had things to answer for.
Sienna began trusting her ability to hold more than one truth.
In January, she agreed to see Edmund.
Mara attended.
The meeting lasted twelve minutes.
Her father entered wearing a gray suit and the expression of a man arriving to correct an administrative mistake.
“Sienna.”
She said nothing.
“I’m told you’ve been working.”
“Yes.”
“At some little firm.”
“Yes.”
He smiled thinly.
“You always did enjoy proving a point.”
She felt the old instinct rise.
Explain.
Defend.
Convince him that her work mattered.
Instead, she looked at the clock.
He noticed.
His smile vanished.
“I am still your father.”
“I know.”
“I made mistakes.”
“You broke my hand because I wouldn’t sign.”
He looked toward Mara.
“Must we use that language?”
Sienna stood.
Mara rose with her.
Edmund’s voice sharpened.
“Sit down.”
For one second, her body remembered.
Then she felt the apartment key in her pocket.
“No.”
He stared at her.
She picked up her coat.
At the door, he said, “Everything you have came from this family.”
Sienna turned.
“My name came from you,” she said. “What I do with it belongs to me.”
Outside, the cold hit her face.
She began shaking before reaching the car.
Mara waited while she breathed.
“Do you regret going?”
Sienna considered it.
“No.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“No.”
That evening, she walked upstairs to her apartment and turned her own key.
Cillian was not there.
Lydia was not there.
Nobody was waiting to tell her what the meeting meant.
She made tea.
She stood beside the window.
May you like
Then she called Cillian because she wanted to hear his voice.
The difference felt enormous.
