The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 262

HANNAH’S POV: 

“But I am still standing,” I said. “And your grandmother Mirada stood up for what was right even when she was frightened and even when she did not have the strength or the time left to fight it herself. She kept the evidence and gave it to someone she trusted and believed it would matter one day.” I looked at Amelia and then at Andrew. We are what happens when she believes that. Both of you, this family, the collection. All of it. We are the thing she trusted the future to deliver.” 

Nobody said anything for a moment. 

Then Andrew said, from the arm of the bench, “That is a big thing to be.” 

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is.” 

“Are we up to it?” he asked. He said it earnestly, he was not worried but he was genuinely asking. 

I looked at him. This boy who had been asking the real questions since before he had the vocabulary for them. Who had sat in a living room and asked his father are you scared, Dad in the exact same direct way his sister had just asked me. 

“I think we are,” I said. 

He nodded once, the slow considering nod he had, and then got up from the arm of the bench and went back to the grass because he had apparently processed enough for now and wanted to finish the movement portion of the afternoon. 

Amelia stayed beside me for another few minutes. Then she said, “I am going to tell my class tomorrow that my grandmother was a brilliant designer and that there is a collection named after her and anyone who wants to look it up can look it up.” 

I looked at her. “You are going to do that?” 

“Yes,” she said. “Mrs. Obama will probably let me talk about it for a few minutes if I ask.” 

I sat on the bench after both children had gone back to the grass and I watched Hannah watch them and I thought about everything that was happening. 

The legal case was building. Castellan’s team had the folder and the recording and five weeks of Kojo’s research and they were building an argument that was solid and layered and was going to take time to bring to a hearing but was, according to Castellan herself, one of the strongest cases of intellectual property theft and deliberate erasure she had handled in twenty years. She said this without any visible excitement because Castellan was not an excited person but I had learned to read the temperature of her language and solid and layered from Castellan meant we are going to win this. 

Voros’s smear campaign had continued in a low hum. More old photographs. A quote from someone unnamed who apparently remembered Hannah from Frerus in an unflattering context. A piece about the Martinez Holdings financial history that recycled the Kelloway story with new framing. Each one designed to put us on the defensive, to pull focus, to make the name Mirada something people associated with controversy rather than something they associated with brilliance and justice. 

It was working in some small pockets of the internet, the way these things always work in the corners where people have already decided what they believe and are looking for material to support it. It was not working where/ it mattered. The collection had been written about in plenty countries. The name Mirada was appearing in serious fashion press alongside words like legacy and landmark and in three separate pieces the phrase stolen foundation had been used in reference to the growing whispers about what the collection was actually based on. 

Voros had started a fire to bury the story. 

The story had come back louder.