Chapter 8 - William Reynolds Was Not Innocent Either
William turned on Evelyn.
I stopped him.
“Before you make her the only villain, ask what you knew.”
William stared at me.
Eight years earlier, he knew Daniel and I were divorcing during a pregnancy dispute.
He never called me.
He accepted Evelyn’s explanation that the pregnancy was fabricated.
Why?
Because it was convenient.
A complicated truth threatened the family image.
A simple story protected it.
William had commanded thousands of people.
He had demanded verification in operational decisions.
At home, he accepted hearsay.
He admitted that.
“I failed you.”
“You failed them.”
I nodded toward the library.
He corrected himself.
“I failed them.”
That mattered more.
The Reynolds family had spent generations treating reputation like infrastructure.
May you like
Everything rested on it.
Nobody wanted to ask what had been buried underneath.
