Chapter 13 - THE SENTENCE
Belle said no.
Immediately.
Micah asked why.
“Because adults don’t get to use children to feel better.”
Renick agreed.
That surprised her.
Sebastian wrote instead.
The letter stayed sealed with prosecutors.
Micah could choose when he was older.
Maybe never.
At sentencing, Sebastian looked smaller.
Not harmless.
Smaller.
He admitted ordering the sabotage that killed Maeve.
He admitted paying for the warehouse fire.
He denied intending Brinley to die on the balcony.
He claimed the plan was to frighten Renick.
Nobody believed him.
Micah’s gold button sat in an evidence bag on the prosecution table.
The red enamel eye caught the courtroom light.
Belle stared at it.
One tiny thing.
A child noticed it.
An empire cracked around it.
The judge sentenced Sebastian to life without parole on combined federal and state agreements.
Others received terms ranging from probation to decades.
Renick avoided charges for some historic conduct through a cooperation agreement but paid enormous forfeitures and accepted restrictions on businesses.
Not clean.
Not heroic.
Accountable enough to start.
After court, a reporter asked Renick.
“Are you out of organized crime?”
Renick looked at Belle.
She raised one eyebrow.
He answered.
“I’m out of pretending it was business.”
That became another headline.
He hated it too.
Sully became security director of the legitimate Kavanaugh holdings after federal vetting.
Declan moved west.
He and Renick still fought on the phone.
Progress.
Belle left domestic work at the estate.
Not because Renick told her to.
She enrolled in a hospital facilities program using money from a victim compensation fund and a scholarship Maeve had quietly established years earlier for staff families.
She checked the paperwork three times to make sure Renick had not invented it.
He looked offended.
She checked a fourth time.
Micah started second grade.
Brinley started speaking more.
Not because she was “fixed.”
Because she felt safer.
One afternoon, Belle picked Micah up and found Brinley waiting too.
Renick was late.
Very late.
Micah looked at Belle.
“Can she come home with us?”
Belle looked at Brinley.
Brinley already had her backpack on.
Belle sighed.
“Apparently.”
Renick arrived twenty minutes later, breathless.
“I’m sorry.”
Belle handed him a paper grocery bag.
“What’s this?”
“Mac and cheese.”
He stared.
“You made me dinner?”
“No.”
“Micah made too much.”
Micah shouted from the hallway.
“I did not!”
Belle closed the door in Renick’s face.
May you like
Then laughed against it.
