---- Chapter 16 The legal system, when fueled by the limitless resources of the Wallace empire, moved with terrifying speed. Celia Norman was charged with a litany of crimes, from fraud and extortion to reckless endangerment and accessory to wrongful death. The recording was the centerpiece of the prosecution's case, an undeniable testament to her malevolence. Blake, true to his word, did not hide his own role. He submitted to hours of grueling depositions, his lawyers fighting to frame his actions as the result of manipulation, but Blake himself offered no excuses. He detailed every cruelty, every act of complicity, his voice a dead monotone. He was sentenced to five years of probation and ordered to pay an astronomical sum in damages to a victims' fund-a punishment the public decried as laughably lenient, but to Blake, it was meaningless. No court-ordered punishment could ever compare to the prison he had built for himself. Celia was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. She was dragged from the courtroom screaming curses at him, her face a mask of pure, impotent rage. Blake watched her go, and he felt nothing. No triumph. No relief. Just a vast, gray emptiness. ---- With Celia gone, the full weight of his solitude descended upon him. He became a recluse. He handed over the day-to- day operations of his company to a trusted board, emerging only for the most critical decisions. He cut off all his friends, ignored all social invitations. His world shrank to the walls of the Wallace mansion. But even that was too much. The grand, opulent rooms were filled with the ghosts of his happiness and the echoes of his cruelty. He could not escape the memory of Ellen's laughter in the living room, or the image of her father collapsing on the cold marble floor. He moved permanently into the small servant's room in the attic. He lived a life of monastic severity. He ate the simplest food. He wore the plainest clothes. He slept on the hard, narrow bed, the worn teddy bear his only comfort in the long, dark nights. He was surrounded by unimaginable wealth, yet he lived like a pauper, a king in self-imposed exile. His penance was his life's work. The Ellen Strong Foundation became his sole focus. He poured his time, his energy, his fortune into it, building it into a national force for good. He funded shelters, sponsored legal aid for victims, and created educational programs to help people recognize and escape manipulative relationships. He did it all from the shadows, his name never attached publicly. The work was not for accolades. It was an act of ---- desperate, unending atonement. It was the only way he could honor her memory. The years passed. One year. Three. Five. The sharp, jagged edges of his grief slowly wore down into a dull, constant ache. He learned to live with the ghost in his heart. He functioned. He worked. He breathed. But he did not live. He was a machine built of regret, going through the motions of existence. One afternoon, he was in a quarterly meeting with the director of the foundation. It was a routine update-budgets, new initiatives, success stories. Blake listened with his usual detached focus, his eyes staring out the window at the gray New York skyline. The director, a compassionate woman named Mrs. Gable, was wrapping up her report. "And one last thing," she said, a small smile on her face. "Just a little human-interest story | thought you might like to hear. We received a small donation last month from a little café out in Oregon. It wasn't much, just a hundred dollars, but it came with a note." She pushed a piece of paper across the table. "The owner wrote that she had started the café to create a safe, peaceful place for people, and our foundation's mission resonated with her. She said she was happy to contribute what she could." Blake glanced at the note out of politeness, his mind already elsewhere. And then he saw the name. ---- The name of the café was "The Strong Anchor." And the signature at the bottom of the note, written in a familiar, elegant script that made his heart stop, was "E. Strong." The world tilted on its axis. The air rushed from his lungs. He shot to his feet, his chair crashing backward to the floor. The papers on the table scattered. Mrs. Gable jumped, startled by his violent reaction. "Mr. Wallace? Are you alright?" He leaned over the table, his hands planted flat on the polished wood to keep himself from collapsing. His eyes, for the first time in five years, were blazing with a wild, terrifying light. "This name," he rasped, his voice trembling, his finger stabbing at the signature. "This café. Where is it? | need an address. | need everything you have on this person. Now." The hope that bloomed in his chest was so fierce, so powerful, it was almost painful. It was an insane, impossible hope. He had seen the manifest. He had held her scorched wedding ring. She was dead. But... The Strong Anchor. E. Strong. It couldn't be a coincidence. It couldn't. He immediately mobilized his private security team, the best ---- in the world, men who could find anyone, anywhere. His orders were precise, his voice shaking with an urgency that bordered on hysteria. "Find out everything about the owner of a café called The Strong Anchor in Astoria, Oregon. | want photos. | want history. | want to know what she ate for breakfast. But you will not, under any circumstances, let her know she is being watched. You will not approach her. You will not speak to her. If she even suspects anything, | will personally ruin every single one of you. Do you understand?" The next seventy-two hours were the longest of his life. He didn't sleep. He didn't eat. He paced the length of his office like a caged tiger, a churning maelstrom of hope and terror raging within him. What if it was her? What would he do? What could he possibly say? And what if it wasn't? What if it was just a cruel coincidence, a cosmic joke designed to give him a glimpse of heaven before plunging him back into hell? On the third day, his head of security arrived. He placed a single manila envelope on Blake's desk. He said nothing. Blake stared at the envelope as if it were a venomous snake. His hands trembled as he reached for it. He fumbled with the clasp, his fingers clumsy and numb. He pulled out a single photograph. ---- It was a candid shot, taken from a distance with a long lens. It showed a woman, her back mostly to the camera, tending to a small garden in front of a charming, sun-drenched café. She was wearing simple jeans and a worn sweater, her hair tied back in a messy ponytail. Then she turned, just slightly, to smile at someone out of frame. And Blake' s world stopped. It was her face. Thinner, perhaps. Etched with a quiet maturity he didn't recognize. But it was her. The curve of her smile. The way her eyes crinkled at the corners. It was Ellen. She was alive. A sound, a choked, strangled sob of pure, unadulterated shock and joy, escaped his lips. The photograph slipped from his numb fingers. He collapsed into his chair, burying his face in his hands, his body shaking with the force of five years of repressed grief and guilt finally breaking free. She was alive. And she was smiling.