What Lucas Said Before Sentencing
Chapter 13 - What Lucas Said Before Sentencing
Before sentencing, Lucas requested a private meeting with Catherine.
She agreed only with attorneys and a glass partition between them.
He looked older than the man who crossed the dining room in black. Without the estate, assistants and tailored certainty, his anger seemed smaller but no less dangerous.
Lucas said he never intended Evelyn to die.
He wanted time. He wanted control long enough to complete the sale, stabilize the company and prove he could build something larger than his grandmother’s legacy.
“Hale and Helena went too far,” he said.
“You watched.”
“I froze.”
“You prepared the DNR.”
“I was protecting the family from a public medical spectacle.”
Catherine recognized the pattern. Every harmful choice became protection after he lost control of its consequences.
Lucas asked whether Evelyn truly hated him.
“She left you a letter separate from the trust,” Catherine said.
His face changed.
She had found it in the legal archive. Evelyn wrote that she loved him and regretted shielding him from accountability as a child. She described the first employee he bullied, the first expense report he falsified and the first time she erased consequences because he carried the Ashford name.
Each rescue taught him that love meant exemption.
Catherine slid a copy beneath the partition.
Lucas read silently.
For several minutes, he cried.
Catherine did not know whether the tears came from remorse, grief or the loss of an identity built around being chosen.
He asked her to speak in favor of a reduced sentence.
“No.”
“Then why give me this?”
“Because truth is not valuable only when it helps my side.”
She stood.
Lucas pressed one hand against the glass.
“I did love you.”
Catherine paused.
“I believe you loved the version of me that made you feel good without asking you to change.”
May you like
She left the letter with him.
It was the last private conversation they ever had.
