Victoria’s Choice
Chapter 15 - Victoria’s Choice
Victoria Ashford remained the last family member openly fighting the reforms.
She filed appeals, funded hostile media campaigns and insisted Catherine had dismantled her birthright. Yet the trial had also forced Victoria to confront her own role.
She had ignored Lucas’s violence.
She had dismissed Evelyn’s concerns as generational conflict.
She had signed board resolutions without reading them because her son promised to protect the family.
When Helena’s financial records became public, Victoria learned that Lucas had pledged her home as collateral for Northbridge obligations.
The birthright she defended had already been used without her knowledge.
One winter morning, Victoria arrived at the original clinic carrying a box of family papers. She asked to see Catherine.
Inside the box were Lucas’s childhood evaluations, early disciplinary reports and letters from Evelyn. They documented decades of warning signs concealed to protect the Ashford reputation.
Victoria wanted them placed in the legal archive.
“I cannot change what I excused,” she said. “I can stop helping him hide it.”
Catherine accepted the records but did not offer immediate forgiveness.
Victoria began attending a support group for relatives of people convicted of violent crimes. She also withdrew the remaining lawsuits and sold one family property to fund restitution for employees retaliated against during Lucas’s leadership.
Some relatives called her betrayal complete.
Victoria replied that loyalty without truth had already cost her mother’s life.
Her transformation was neither dramatic nor clean. She still defended Lucas in moments of grief. She still resented Catherine. She still struggled to distinguish accountability from abandonment.
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But she stopped using power to prevent consequences.
For the Ashford family, that was new.
