Chapter 227- Cruxius Manipulation
"Don’t." Her mother’s voice carried clearly through the glass, sharp and clipped. "Don’t ’Aunty’ me."
Jake’s smile faltered. "I just wanted to—"
"His father lost everything." Her mother crossed her arms. She had the particular gift of making herself look larger when she was angry, a talent that had served her well for decades and showed no sign of diminishing. "The hospital is gone. The money is gone. ’He’ is gone. And you’re here, standing on my grass, for what exactly?"
"I love Jenny," Jake said. His voice gained a desperate sincerity that might have moved someone who hadn’t heard it before. "That hasn’t changed. Whatever happened with my father, I’m still—"
"You’re still broke," her mother said. The words arrived without ceremony, flat and final as a stamp on a document. "And the wedding is cancelled. ’Has been’ cancelled. Which I have told you, and Jenny has told you, and yet here you stand on my grass."
Jake’s jaw tightened. "Please, Aunty. Just let me see her. Five minutes. If you’d just—"
"Leave."
"I’m not—"
"I said ’leave.’" Her mother’s voice dropped to the particular register that indicated she had moved past negotiation entirely and was now simply issuing a final warning before escalation. "You are not welcome here. Your father is dead and your money is gone and my daughter has better things to do than feel sorry for you. Now get off my grass before I call someone to remove you from it."
Jake’s face did something complicated — the sequence of a man who had arrived with a script and found the stage completely different from the one he’d rehearsed for. He opened his mouth. Closed it. His hands came out of his pockets, a helpless gesture that completed nothing.
"Just—"
"Piss off," her mother said pleasantly, and turned back toward the house.
Jenny pressed her lips together. Hard. The sound that almost escaped her was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh and she swallowed it before it could decide which one it wanted to be.
Below, Jake stood for a moment in the particular stillness of a man processing defeat. Then his shoulders dropped. He turned back toward his car — and here was the part that made Jenny’s eye twitch — he didn’t get in. He stood beside it. He looked up at her window one more time, shoulders curved forward, wearing the expression of a man who considered visible suffering a valid negotiating tactic.
She stepped back from the window.
"You lost your money," she said quietly, to the curtain, to herself, to the general unfairness of circumstance. "What exactly do we have?"
Nothing, answered the silence.
She turned away from the window and fell backward onto the bed.
The mattress absorbed her with a soft, enveloping bounce, her hair fanning out across the pillow, arms landing loosely at her sides. She stared at the ceiling in her pale yellow pyjamas — the loose-fitting kind, soft cotton, comfortable and wholly unimpressive, the clothes of someone who had given up on the day before the day had finished giving up on them.
Her phone sat face-down on the mattress.
She didn’t reach for it. She had sent a message — she wasn’t going to think about what possessed her to do it, she simply had, in a weak moment at two in the morning six days ago, when the house was too quiet and the television wasn’t holding her attention and her thoughts had gone to the place they always went when she let her guard down. She had typed something brief and vaguely casual and sent it before she could talk herself out of it.
He hadn’t responded.
One month of messages. One month of left on read, of that particular digital silence that was somehow louder than being told no. She had told herself, repeatedly, that she had stopped caring. That she had moved on from the very idea of it. That the whole thing was silly anyway, built on a single brief interaction and the kind of imagination that thrived in the absence of better options.
She had almost believed herself.
’Brrring.’
The phone vibrated.
Jenny’s hand moved toward it with the automatic reflex of someone who had been unconsciously waiting, and she picked it up before she’d fully registered the intention to do so. The screen showed a number she didn’t recognize — and then her thumb was already moving, already accepting, already pressing the phone to her ear before the rational part of her brain had completed a single full sentence.
"Hello?"
The voice that came through the line stopped every function in her body simultaneously.
Low. Easy. Carrying the particular warmth of someone who was smiling in a room she couldn’t see.
’"Hello."’
Jenny’s spine went rigid.
She sat up.
Her brain performed several rapid, competing calculations — cross-referencing the voice with the voice she had been replaying in her memory for a month, checking it against every imagined version of this moment, arriving at a conclusion that seemed simultaneously impossible and exact.
"Wait—" Her voice came out smaller than she intended. She cleared her throat. "’Wait.’ Is it — is this... Cruxius?"
A brief pause. Just long enough to make her heart do something stupid.
’"It is."’
Jenny’s free hand flew to her face. She pressed her fingers over her mouth, then removed them. She stood up from the bed, sat down again, stood up. Her reflection caught in the dressing mirror across the room — pale yellow pyjamas, hair loosely mussed from the pillow, eyes slightly wide, the overall impression of someone who had been caught spectacularly underprepared.
"I—" She forced herself to breathe. "I didn’t think you’d actually — I mean, I sent the message but I didn’t—" She stopped. Started again, this time with something approaching composure. "How are you? Is everything okay? How’s your day been?"
The question came out in a rush and she winced at herself slightly.
’"Fine."’ His voice was unhurried, carrying the mild amusement of someone watching something entertaining unfold from a comfortable distance. ’"Relaxed, actually. I’ve taken a leave. Left someone to manage the family affairs for the time being."’
"Oh?" She settled back against the headboard, pulling her knees up. "Someone reliable?"
’"Reliable enough. My servant Thalia is handling things."’
The word landed in the center of Jenny’s chest like a dropped stone hitting still water.
The ripple spread outward.
’Servant.’
Jenny’s mouth opened, then closed.
She turned the word over very carefully, the way you handle something you’re not sure is real.
Her mind went immediately to the press conference — she had watched it, couldn’t help watching it, had sat on this same bed with this same phone and stared at the television screen showing Thalia sitting at that enormous table beside the patriarch while the world’s cameras detonated around her.
’Daughter-in-law. Full ownership of all industries under the Black family name.’
Her fingers tightened around the phone.
"...Thalia?" she said, keeping her voice light. Carefully light. The kind of light that required maintenance.
’"She has a talent for looking official,"’ Cruxius said, and she could hear the particular quality of someone choosing their words with a precision that wore the costume of carelessness. ’"It suits her. I find business tedious. Someone has to sit in the chairs and answer the questions and I’ve decided that someone isn’t me. Until I decide otherwise, she manages the Blac name. It keeps her occupied."’