"Orchestrated for financial gain."Isabelle read the line out loud, her voice hollow, like saying it might somehow make it less true. "They think I planned this with you. That I knew who you were this whole time and pretended not to, so my family could get their hands on Sterling money.""You know that's not true," I said."Do I?" Her eyes lifted to mine, raw and furious. "Because from where I'm standing, Corwin, everyone in this city apparently knew more about you an hour ago than I did after four days of living beside you."There was no time to answer her properly. My phone was already ringing, Malik's name on the screen, his voice clipped and urgent the moment I picked up."Desmond's called an emergency family gathering," he said. "Tonight, at the estate. Word's already spreading through the staff. He's furious, Corwin, and Vivienne's telling anyone who'll listen that you and Isabelle planned this whole thing together to humiliate the family.""We're on our way," I said, and ended

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. I do not think a single person in that dining room had ever seen Odalys Sterling in person before, and yet every one of them seemed to understand instantly, from the way she carried herself through the doorway like the house already belonged to her, exactly who she was.She had that effect on rooms. I had watched her walk into boardrooms full of men twice her size and half her age, men who ran companies worth more than the Renfrew estate could be sold for twice over, and every one of them found a reason to stand a little straighter the moment she entered. It was not the money, though there was plenty of that. It was the certainty in her, the sense that she had already calculated every possible outcome of the conversation before it started and simply hadn't decided yet which one she was going to allow.She wore a plain grey coat, unremarkable except for the way she wore it, and carried a slim leather folder tucked beneath one arm like a woman who had come

The name Odalys refused to say hung over the rest of the evening like smoke that would not clear, and by the time the family finally scattered to their separate corners of the estate, I found myself standing alone in the hallway outside my grandmother's borrowed guest room, waiting for a knock I was not certain would come.It came just after midnight. Isabelle stood in the doorway wrapped in a shawl against the chill, her face pale and composed in the careful way that told me she had spent the last hour rehearsing exactly what she wanted to say."Walk with me," she said. "Somewhere that isn't full of my family."We ended up in the garden, the same stretch of hedges my father used to trim on Sunday mornings, the night air cool enough to sharpen every word between us. She did not sit on the low stone wall. She stood facing me, arms crossed, and I understood she needed the distance of standing to say what she had come to say."I keep trying to find the version of tonight where I'm not an

Priya called me from the estate just after midnight, her voice tight with the particular urgency of someone who had spent the entire day building something fragile and important."I have it," she said. "All of it. The pharmacy records, the forged authorization compared side by side with Edmund's real signature, the timeline showing exactly when the dosage changes started and how they lined up with his decline. It's airtight, Corwin. A prosecutor could take this to trial tomorrow and win.""Where is it now," I asked, already feeling something uneasy stir in my chest, some old instinct that had kept me alive in boardrooms full of people who wanted me to fail."Locked in the estate's private office," she said. "The one off Edmund's study. I used the safe he set up years ago, the one only he and I currently have the combination to. I wanted it somewhere secure until your legal team could collect it in the morning.""Good," I said, though the unease did not fade. "Send Malik to sit with it

Isabelle had told herself she would not look at the news, that Camille's quiet guest room with its soft lamplight and unfamiliar quilt was meant to be a place away from all of it, a place where she could think clearly instead of reacting to whatever headline the city had produced that day. She had lasted less than eighteen hours before curiosity won.The article filled her screen before she had even finished typing his name into the search bar, a photograph of me from the charity gala Marcus had first shown her, cropped and recropped across a dozen different outlets, each one adding its own speculation to a story that had already spun far past the truth. Hidden Heir's Calculated Courtship. Sterling Heir's Secret Engagement Games. Did Corwin Sterling Orchestrate a Family's Downfall for Corporate Gain.She read three of the articles before setting the phone down, her stomach twisted into something tight and uncomfortable. None of them sounded like the man who had sat beside her in a hos