Page 100 of Stolen Harmony
“You've been busy,” he said finally, chin lifting toward one of the framed renderings on the wall—clean lines, new money,the future I was promising a town that didn't want to be saved. “Redevelopment, donors, billboards with your good side.”
“I don't have a bad side,” I said, deadpan. His snort was almost laughter.
I pushed off the chair with a small, unbothered sound and moved behind the desk. The laptop woke at my touch, a pane of darkness brightening into order. My fingers, elegant and sure, typed the password without looking.
He watched me the way a man watches a match near dry tinder. “You bought the house,” he said at last. Not a question. “Mine.”
I didn't look up. “You sold it,” I corrected mildly. “To me. To cover debts you pretended not to have until the bank stopped pretending with you. You remain there at my pleasure, which should feel like mercy.”
His jaw worked. “You don't get to call it mercy when you're the one who made sure I had no other buyers.”
“Influence is a terrible thing,” I said, and clicked.
A grid of camera feeds bloomed across the screen. Some were live—black-and-white corridors in low light, the soft blink of a router's eye. One window was marked with a timestamp from the night before, a modest apartment above a bookstore, lamp pooling golden over a battered sofa. I tapped the video and it expanded. I never had to ask the room for quiet.
He leaned forward, understanding landing a moment after recognition. “What is that.”
“Insurance,” I said, almost absently. The footage moved: a door, then two men; laughter that was more breath than sound; gravity doing its old trick with bodies that wanted to fall. The frame held on hands, on faces, on a kiss that had been a long time coming. No sound, not really—just the intimate hush of a camera that had been placed to watch and did its job too well.
His expression did something I rarely saw: it cracked. “You placed a camera in that boy's home.”
“Boy?” My brows rose a fraction. “He's twenty-six. He invited me. We had a lovely evening.”
“Inviting you isn't consent to surveillance.”
“It is when I need it to be,” I said, turning the screen away a fraction, then back again. I studied the freeze-frame I chose—a hand at a jaw, the soft ruin of restraint coming undone. “And let's not cheapen this by pretending we're talking about privacy like parish ladies. We're talking about leverage.”
“I'm talking about your brother,” he said, voice thinning. “About Elias.”
I clicked the video off and the screen went black, then showed only my reflection: composed, almost bored. “So am I.”
We looked at each other across the desk, thirty years of misaligned expectations lying between us like a third person.
“This obsession of yours,” he said. “Elaine, the studio, this town—my God, Victor, when do you stop?”
“When it's done,” I said simply. “When I've built something that doesn't fall apart because people are too sentimental to hold a wrench.”
“By tearing your brother down?” His hands knotted and smoothed on his knees. “By using that young man as a knife?”
My smile had no heat to it. “Elias is the one who hands me the knife. He has a gift for not choosing until someone chooses for him.” I lifted a shoulder, graceful. “The town adores a martyr. I'm merely adjusting the narrative.”
“And Rowan?” he asked, tasting the name like a test. “He's still a person. Not a pawn.”
“Oh, he's more than a pawn,” I said, pleased at the correction. “He's a motif. A theme.”
“Don't talk about people like they're sheet music,” he snapped, the old music-hall in him coming out sharp as aconductor's stick. His hand hovered over the desk, then fell away. “You used to know the difference.”
I closed the laptop with a soft, final click. “I know precisely what things are,” I said. “And what they can be made into.”
I moved back around the desk and sat again beside him, spine at a polite angle, hands clean of the conversation. “You came all the way out here to tell me I'm cruel,” I said. “You can save your breath. I'm efficient. The town will be better for it.”
“I came,” he said, “to remind you that you still have a father. That there are lines.”
“You sold me the house that taught me there aren't,” I said, and for a heartbeat something mean and young flashed through my eyes. I let it pass. “Don't worry. I won't publish anything. Not yet.”
His gaze cut to the laptop. “Not yet.”
I inclined my head. “But you see the value. If a donor asks the wrong questions. If a board member wavers. If the town needs to be reminded that the Wards are not the saints they pretend to be.” I let the sentence drift, the shape of a threat more effective than its execution.
