At Vanessa Vale’s wedding, she looked me in the face in front of 280 guests and said, “Get out, you scum.” The string quartet stopped so suddenly that I could hear glasses clinking at the tables behind me. Vanessa stood there in nearly fifty thousand euros of white silk, while I wore an eighty-nine-dollar beige dress and carried my mother’s old leather bag. And before the night was over, the invitation inside that bag would make her new husband question almost everything she had told him.

Thomas held the silver rosary up to the chandelier light.

“My wife never took this rosary off,” Thomas said softly. “Except when she went into the MRI machine the night she was admitted. She handed it to me.”

He looked at Vanessa.

“Do you know what she told me before she went to sleep that night, Vanessa?”

Vanessa didn’t answer. She was backed into a corner, trapped.

“She told me that the woman who helped her in the bathroom at the train station had accidentally dropped her purse,” Thomas said. “My wife helped pick up her things. And she saw a very specific keychain.”

Thomas looked at me.

“A keychain with a silver locket. The one your mother lost the night she died in the car accident ten years ago, Maya.”

The room spun.

My mother died in a hit-and-run when I was nineteen. The police never found the driver.

Reversal.

Vanessa wasn’t just a corporate thief. She was the monster who had haunted my entire adult life.

“You killed my mother?” I whispered, the weight of the realization crushing the air from my lungs.

Vanessa laughed. It was a high, hysterical, broken sound.

“She ran a red light!” Vanessa yelled. “I was nineteen! I was drunk! My father covered it up! If your stupid mother had just looked both ways—”

I didn’t think.

I closed the distance between us in three strides.

Vanessa raised her hand to slap me, just like she had controlled everyone else.

But I caught her wrist mid-air.

I squeezed it so hard she gasped in pain. With my other hand, I ripped the braided leather bracelet off her arm.

“You are nothing,” I said, my voice dangerously calm. “You wear expensive clothes and you throw expensive parties, but underneath all of it, you are nothing but a coward.”

I let go of her wrist and pushed her backward. She stumbled, her expensive silk dress tangling around her legs.

“Adrian!” Vanessa cried out, looking for her husband to save her one last time.

Adrian didn’t look at her.

He was looking at Marcus, who was trying to slip out the side door while everyone was distracted.

“Security,” Adrian said loudly.

Two massive men in black suits grabbed Marcus by the arms, slamming him against the wall.

“Hey! I have the files!” Marcus shouted. “I’ll ruin you, Adrian!”

Adrian walked over to the heavy charcoal coat lying on the floor. He picked it up and reached into the inside pocket.

He pulled out a thick, leather-bound ledger.

“You mean these files, Marcus?” Adrian asked coldly.

Marcus’s face dropped.

“You think I didn’t notice you transferring offshore funds last month?” Adrian said. “I’ve had forensic accountants on your books for three weeks. I invited you to be my best man so you wouldn’t run before the FBI got the warrant.”

Adrian looked at his father. “Dad. Call the police.”

Thomas pulled out his phone.

Vanessa realized it was over. The money was gone. Her leverage was gone. Her freedom was evaporating by the second.

She looked frantically around the room, and her eyes landed on Lily.