for a company called Larkspur Domestic Services.
“Larkspur,” Ives said slowly.
Corinne’s fingers tightened around her clutch.
Augustus turned toward her.
“You recognize it?”
“It is a household vendor,” Corinne said. “I use many services.”
“It is registered above a closed nail salon in Queens,” Aria said. “The listed manager is your driver’s nephew. He opened it two weeks after my wedding. Over eight months, Larkspur received transfers totaling three million three hundred thirty-six thousand dollars from the account meant for me and my child.”
A senator at the nearest table set down his glass.
Nathan laughed.
It was a thin sound.
“You printed internet garbage and brought it to a gala.”
“No,” Aria said. “I brought audio too.”
Corinne looked at her then.
Really looked.
For two years, Corinne had looked at Aria as furniture that had arrived in the wrong house. Now she looked at her like an opponent.
It felt almost like respect.
Ives removed the recorder from the side pocket of the diaper bag. It was small, black, scratched, and cheap. A ridiculous object in that room. More powerful than every diamond on Corinne’s throat.
“Play it,” Augustus said.
The first seconds were static.
Then Corinne’s voice filled the ballroom.
“Augustus is sentimental. He wires the money, we redirect it, and by the time she understands, she will be too desperate to fight. Poor girls always are.”
No one moved.
Aria felt Elias stir. She kissed the top of his head and kept her eyes on Nathan.
The recording continued.
Nathan’s voice came next, lower and impatient.
“After the baby is born, make sure she cannot get back into the apartment. If she shows up at the gala, security can remove her. She will look unstable. That helps us.”
A glass shattered somewhere near the fountain.
Corinne swayed. Nathan did not reach for her.
That told Aria something too.
“It is edited,” Nathan said. “Obviously edited.”
Ives looked at him without expression.
“Then you will have no objection to forensic review.”
Nathan’s lips parted, then closed.
Augustus turned toward Corinne.
“You kept my great-grandson hungry.”
Corinne’s composure cracked, but not into remorse. Into anger.
“Your great-grandson?” she snapped. “That child was a weapon from the beginning. She got pregnant because she knew Nathan was losing interest. She used your guilt over her mother to force herself into this family.”
Aria felt the words hit. Not because they were true, but because they had been said so many times behind doors that part of her body knew where to bruise.
Nathan straightened, encouraged by his mother’s cruelty.
“She trapped me,” he said. “Everyone knows it.”
Augustus’s cane struck the marble once.
The sound cut the room in half.
“Enough.”
But Aria raised one hand.
“No,” she said. “Let him finish.”
Nathan blinked.
She had interrupted Augustus Vale in front of two hundred people.
Three years earlier, she would not have dared. Three months earlier, she might have folded under the heat of every stare. But childbirth had done something to her. Poverty had done something too. Betrayal had burned away the soft parts Nathan used to grab.
“Go on,” she said. “Tell them how I trapped you. Tell them how many times you visited me after the seventh month. Tell them why your phone was off when
