Chapter 6 - I make it worse
My publicist drafted a response.
I rejected it.
Then wrote my own.
Mistake.
I posted:
Marcella Vane deliberately destroyed multiple photographs of my daughter’s deceased mother and physically shoved my seven-year-old. Anyone defending her should ask why a forty-year-old woman has spent nine months tormenting a grieving child.
Accurate enough.
Then I added:
The Vane family should be more concerned about the agreements keeping their company solvent than social-media sympathy.
Miriam called within ninety seconds.
“Delete the second paragraph.”
“Why?”
“You sound like you’re using economic leverage to silence an accuser.”
“She threatened my family first.”
“Congratulations. You are both forty.”
I deleted it.
Screenshots remained.
Of course.
Vane counsel later cited it as evidence Devereux Holdings might retaliate against Vane Event & Hospitality for Marcella’s police complaint.
That meant I now had to recuse myself from any business decision affecting them.
My anger had turned an obvious commercial conflict into a governance problem.
Celine would have hated that.
I could almost hear her:
May you like
“If the facts are good, stop decorating them.”
I missed her most when she would have been annoyed with me.
