The Woman Behind the Black Dress
Chapter 10 - The Woman Behind the Black Dress
Alexandra had not always been the severe woman society described.
Before Claire disappeared, she hosted employee scholarship dinners, visited ships with Richard, and argued openly with Mason about risk.
After the yacht accident, grief made her relentless.
She accused board members without complete evidence. She broke into Mason’s office. She publicly called him a murderer before proving Claire survived.
Mason used those actions to establish instability.
Dr. Simon Vale prescribed sedatives and wrote that Alexandra suffered paranoid delusions.
Some symptoms were trauma.
Some claims were true.
The two realities were used against each other.
Alexandra admitted to Victoria that she spent years treating anyone close to Mason as an extension of him.
“You included me.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted the wedding to expose him even if it destroyed me.”
“Yes.”
“Would you do it again?”
Alexandra looked toward Claire sleeping in the next room.
“I don’t know.”
The answer was more honest than a lesson learned too quickly.
Claire asked both women to stop organizing the investigation around Mason.
“I survived eight years,” she said. “The story keeps turning into what he did and what you did to stop him.”
She wanted medical independence, access to her letters, and time before public testimony.
The press demanded photographs.
The family refused.
Claire’s first public statement contained one sentence:
“I am alive. That does not make me public property.”
Victoria read it twice.
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Her own career had been built on turning private life into visible currency. She once believed being seen meant being powerful.
Claire had survived through the right not to be watched.
