Chapter 21 - VICTORIA’S CHOICE

The plea offer was eighteen months in state prison, five years of supervised release, full restitution, and mandatory testimony against Martin.

Her attorney believed she could fight for probation.

Victoria refused.

“She wants to take the deal,” he told me.

“Why?”

“You would have to ask her.”

So I did.

We met in the courthouse conference room.

She looked thinner.

Older.

I probably did too.

I handed her Elise’s letter.

Victoria read it slowly.

Her hands began shaking halfway through.

When she finished, she pressed the paper against her chest and cried.

Not beautifully.

She made a snorting sound and got angry at herself for it.

I almost laughed.

Then I felt guilty for almost laughing.

Then she laughed too.

It was awful and human.

“My mother hated crying,” she said.

“So did mine.”

For a minute, grief made us familiar.

Then reality returned.

“Why are you taking prison time if your lawyer thinks you can get probation?” I asked.

Victoria folded the letter carefully.

“Because I keep looking for a version where consequences happen to everyone except me.”

I said nothing.

“I blamed Martin. Then your parents. Then my mother. Then grief.”

“All of those things mattered.”

“Yes.”

She looked at me.

“But I still walked into Florence’s house with those papers.”

There was no dramatic redemption in that sentence.

Just ownership.

I respected it.

I hated that I respected it.

She signed the plea two days later.

Her testimony became the center of the case against Martin.

She described how he recruited her resentment, coached her to approach me, fed her false financial records, and later drafted the documents used against Florence.

Then the prosecutor asked why she continued after she had fallen in love with me.

Victoria looked across the courtroom.

At me.

“Because love did not automatically make me brave.”

The room went still.

Martin stared straight ahead.

Then his attorney leaned over and whispered something to him.

Martin’s face finally lost its calm.

The prosecutor had just introduced Elise’s original signed statement.

---

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