I didn't expect to see Ryan again until a courtroom forced us into the same room. So when the officer called my name for a visitor and I walked in to find him sitting there instead of Isabella, it took me a second to trust what I was looking at.He looked good. Rested, expensive, none of the strain I'd been carrying since the night our grandfather died. "You look like hell," he said, by way of greeting."Funny. I was about to say the opposite about you."He almost smiled at that, the ghost of something that used to pass between us before all of this. "I heard you've got a lawyer stirring up trouble. Filing motions, requesting records, that sort of thing.""Word travels fast for a man who claims he's not involved in any of it.""I'm not involved." He said it flatly, no defensiveness in it, which was somehow more unsettling than if he'd bothered to sound wounded. "I came because Victoria doesn't know I'm here, and I'd like to keep it that way."That got my attention more than anything e

Three days passed before Isabella came back with an answer, and the moment she sat down I could tell she'd found exactly what we'd been waiting for. "Someone tried to access a safe deposit box yesterday afternoon," she said, no preamble. "Box 219. The number you gave Ryan." My pulse picked up. "Who?" "That's the part that's going to complicate things." She opened her folder, though again I got the sense she'd already memorized every detail before walking in. "The bank's security footage shows a woman, mid-thirties, presenting power of attorney documents supposedly signed by you. The documents were good enough to nearly work — bank staff only caught the forgery because the notary seal didn't match anything in their verification system." "Not Ryan." "Not Ryan. Not personally, at least." She watched my face carefully. "But someone connected to whoever he told. Which means either he passed the information along himself, deliberately, or someone got it from him without his knowledge

The emergency bail motion got scheduled faster than Isabella expected, which she told me should have felt like good news and somehow didn't. "Judges don't move quickly unless something makes them nervous," she said, the morning of the hearing, sitting across from me in a suit that looked sharper than usual, like armor rather than clothing. "Either the witness tampering evidence worried them, or someone higher up wants this handled fast, one way or the other.""Which would you prefer?""Honestly? I don't know yet." She closed her briefcase. "Let's find out."The courtroom felt different than the last time I'd stood in one — smaller crowd, no reporters lined up outside, the kind of quiet hearing that happens when powerful people would rather something stay quiet than become a headline. Victoria wasn't there. Ryan was, sitting alone in the back row, and I caught his eye once before forcing myself to look away. Whatever alliance we'd built in that visitation room, I couldn't afford to let

Benjamin was waiting at the bank when we arrived, standing near the entrance in the same neat suit he seemed to wear regardless of the hour, and something in his face when he saw me — relief, maybe, or something closer to grief finally allowed to surface — made me want to believe him more than I'd let myself in weeks."You're really out," he said."For now." I didn't elaborate on the ankle monitor, the conditions, the man from the courtroom who'd vanished before anyone could ask him a single question. There would be time for all of that. Right now there was only the box.The bank had stayed open past hours as a courtesy, or maybe because whatever strings Isabella had pulled to arrange this reached further than she'd let on. A manager led us down into the vault himself, quiet and efficient, and left us alone in a small private room once box 317 sat on the table between us.I stared at it longer than made sense. A month of wondering, of protecting a key I couldn't use, of imagining ever

The phone rang a little before nine the next morning, an unfamiliar number that Isabella eyed with the same suspicion she'd brought to the car the night before. "Don't answer anything you're not ready for," she said, handing it to me anyway. "But I think you should hear who it is."I answered on the fourth ring. "Hello?""Ethan." Victoria's voice, careful and measured, the same tone she'd used at that party a lifetime ago, before any of this had happened. "I heard you were released.""Word travels fast.""It's a small world when you're the woman everyone assumes poisoned her own husband." There was something brittle underneath the words, a rawness I didn't remember hearing from her before, not even in that courtroom when she'd sat beside Ryan refusing to look at me. "I'd like to see you. In person.""Why?""Because there are things I should have said a long time ago, and I'm tired of being a coward about it." A pause, long enough that I almost thought the call had dropped. "Ryan told