Chapter 8 - The Ghost of Reforma
While the Williams Group was rising to new heights of public respect, Maris Williams was experiencing the true cost of her choices.
She sat in a small, damp two-bedroom apartment in the outer suburbs of the city—a place she had been forced to rent using the small, unregulated savings account her lawyers had managed to protect from the federal freeze order. The walls were thin, allowing her to hear the constant rumble of the metropolitan trains and the shouting of the neighbors' children in the concrete courtyard below.
The navy-blue dress she had worn to her seventy-first birthday was hanging in a cheap plastic wardrobe. She wore a simple, grey housecoat, her hands unadorned by rings, her neck bare of pearls.
The doorbell rang—a sharp, mechanical buzz that made her flinch.
She walked to the door, her old, arrogant stride replaced by a hesitant, heavy step. When she opened it, she expected to see her legal counsel with news of a plea bargain.
Instead, Brian Smith stood in the concrete hallway. He carried a single, small cardboard box filled with the remaining personal photographs and letters from her old desk at the Reforma penthouse.
"Brian," Maris whispered, her voice cracking as she looked at the old chauffeur. "Did Victor send you? Did he finally realize he cannot leave his mother in a slum like this?"
Brian set the box down on the floor outside her threshold. He didn't step inside. He looked at her with a quiet, professional pity that hurt more than any corporate indictment.
"Mr. Victor didn't send me, Mrs. Maris," Brian said softly, pulling his cap down over his gray hair. "I came on my own time. I brought the things the legal team didn't need for the evidence lockers."
Maris looked down at the box, her fingers trembling. "He won't even see me, Brian. I’ve called his office twenty times. The secretaries... they hang up the moment they hear my voice."
"You spent three years making sure Miss Catherine couldn't hear his voice, ma'am," Brian replied gently, taking a step back toward the concrete stairs. "The ledger has a way of balancing itself. Mr. Victor is a good man. He’s providing you with the minimum legal allowance required by the state dependency laws. You won't starve. But the family... the family is closed to you now."
"I did it for him!" Maris cried out, her old venom flaring up for a desperate second. "I wanted him to have a real life! A life with power!"
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"He has power now, Mrs. Maris," Brian said as he turned to walk down the dark stairwell. "But it’s the kind of power that comes from a clean heart. And that’s something your money could never buy."
Maris stood in the doorway as the old man’s footsteps faded into the concrete echo. She looked down at the box of old photographs—images of herself standing next to presidents, socialites, and celebrities who didn't even know her phone number anymore. She was entirely alone, a ghost of the Reforma district trapped in a cage of her own making.
