PART 3
Victor Sterling did not arrive like a storm.
He arrived like the silence before one.
The lobby doors opened with a soft rush of cold evening air, and every head turned before anyone seemed to understand why. He stepped inside wearing a charcoal overcoat, rain glistening on the shoulders, his dark hair slightly damp, his expression unreadable. Two men followed several steps behind him—not bodyguards in the obvious sense, but the kind of people whose presence made security guards stand straighter without being asked.
Chloe’s smirk faltered.
Just a little.
But I saw it.
I had spent eight years being underestimated in rooms where Dominic’s colleagues looked past me, smiled politely, and forgot my name before the conversation ended. I had learned to notice the tiniest shifts in faces. The drop of a jaw. The flick of a gaze. The moment confidence became calculation.
Victor’s eyes found mine immediately.
Then they lowered to Sophia.
My daughter stood half-hidden behind my coat, still clutching the paper necklace in both hands. The bright beads she had drawn with crayons looked suddenly too small, too innocent, too painfully sincere for the polished marble lobby, the gold-lit elevators, the women in expensive dresses, the men with champagne glasses and company pins.
Victor’s face changed.
Not much.
But enough.
His voice softened when he said, “Hey, little star.”
Sophia peeked up at him. “Uncle Victor?”
He crouched, ignoring the damp fabric of his coat brushing the floor. “That’s right.”
“You came fast.”
“I always come fast when your mother calls.”
She looked from him to me, her eyes shiny. “Is Daddy upstairs?”
Victor did not answer right away.
That pause hurt more than any lie could have.
I knelt beside her, smoothing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Sophia, sweetheart, Uncle Victor is going to take us somewhere quiet for a little while.”
“But my necklace…” Her voice cracked. “I made it for Daddy.”
I swallowed the ache rising in my throat. “I know.”
She looked down at the paper chain, at the careful purple hearts she had drawn because Dominic once told her purple was “a royal color.” She had remembered that for months. Children remembered love in fragments—favorite colors, bedtime promises, the sound of keys at the door.
And sometimes adults shattered those fragments without even seeing the pieces fall.
Chloe cleared her throat sharply.
“Vivienne,” she said, her tone brittle now, “this is becoming inappropriate.”
Victor slowly stood.
The room seemed to lean back.
He looked at her for the first time. “And you are?”
She straightened as if she had been waiting for the question. “Chloe Maren. Executive assistant to Dominic Vale.”
“Maren,” Victor repeated, as though placing the name in a file drawer. “The one who told my sister her husband’s wife and son were upstairs.”
Her face paled.
Sister.
The word moved through the lobby like a match dropped onto silk.
Someone gasped.
A man near the check-in table whispered, “Sterling?”
Chloe blinked twice. “Your… sister?”
Victor smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “Yes.”
She looked at me then, really looked at me, perhaps for the first time all evening. Not at my simple coat. Not at the absence of diamonds. Not at the woman she thought Dominic had outgrown.
At me.
Vivienne Sterling Vale.
I saw the math unravel behind her eyes.
The Sterling name did what truth sometimes failed to do. It made people listen.
Victor turned slightly and spoke to one of the men behind him. “Please ask the hotel manager to hold the elevator banks and ensure no one leaves the executive ballroom without identification being logged.”
Chloe found her voice. “You can’t do that.”
The man beside Victor was already walking away.
Victor did not even glance at her. “I just did.”
“This is a private corporate event.”
“And now it’s a private corporate problem.”
A murmur rippled through the lobby.
I touched Victor’s sleeve. “Not here,” I whispered. “Not in front of Sophia.”
His gaze softened again. “Agreed.”
That was when the elevator chimed.
The doors opened.
And Dominic stepped out.
For one fragile second, my mind did what broken hearts often do—it reached for an explanation before accepting the wound.
Maybe Chloe lied.
Maybe it was a misunderstanding.
Maybe he would see me and rush forward, confused, horrified, protective.
Maybe he would pick up Sophia, kiss her forehead, and say, “What are you doing down here? I’ve been looking for you.”
But Dominic did none of those things.
He froze.
He stood beneath the golden elevator light in his black tuxedo, one hand still raised as though he had been adjusting his cufflinks. His face drained of color when he saw me. Then Victor. Then Sophia.
And behind him, stepping gracefully out of the elevator, came a woman in an ivory gown.
She was beautiful in a careful, public kind of way—hair swept into a gleaming knot, diamonds at her ears, one hand resting lightly on the shoulder of a little boy in a navy suit.
The boy could not have been older than five.
He looked tired. Confused. His bow tie sat crooked under his chin.
Sophia saw him.
Then she saw Dominic.
Her fingers tightened around the paper necklace until the edges bent.
“Daddy?” she whispered.
Dominic flinched.
The little boy looked up at the woman. “Mommy, who is that?”
The word cracked the lobby open.
Mommy.
The woman’s eyes darted to me, then Dominic. Something like alarm passed across her face—not guilt exactly. Surprise. Fear. And beneath both, a question.
A question I had not expected.
She did not look like a woman caught stealing.
She looked like a woman who had just realized she had been robbed too.
Dominic stepped forward quickly. “Vivienne.”
Victor moved half a step in front of me.
Dominic stopped.
For years, I had watched my husband enter rooms and become larger than himself. Charming. Polished. Ambitious. He knew how to hold a boardroom, how to make investors laugh, how to speak as if every failure was strategy and every risk was brilliance.
But standing there between two families, beneath chandelier light and a hundred curious eyes, he looked very small.
“Viv,” he said, lower this time. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
I almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because some sentences were so empty they echoed.
Sophia stepped from behind me. “Daddy, I made you this.”
Dominic’s eyes dropped to the necklace.
His face crumpled for half a second.
Then he looked away.
That was the moment I stopped waiting for him to be brave.
I took the necklace gently from Sophia’s hands. “Sweetheart,” I said, keeping my voice steady by force alone, “Uncle Victor is going to sit with you by the fountain, okay?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I want Daddy.”
The little boy stared at her. “He’s my daddy.”
Sophia looked at him.
Her lower lip trembled.
The woman in ivory whispered, “Elliot.”
The boy shrank back against her skirt.
I stared at Dominic. “His name is Elliot?”
Dominic closed his eyes.
The woman in ivory turned to him. “Dominic… who is she?”
Chloe took a sudden step backward, as if hoping to dissolve into the marble wall.
Victor noticed.
“Stay,” he said quietly.
She stopped.
The woman’s voice sharpened. “Dominic. Who is she?”
For the first time, Dominic seemed unable to manufacture an answer. His mouth opened. Closed. His gaze darted toward the guests, the check-in table, the elevators, Victor.
Then to me.
“Vivienne is…” He swallowed. “She’s my wife.”
The woman went still.
Not dramatically. Not with a scream. Her entire body simply stopped.
Her hand slid from Elliot’s shoulder.
The little boy looked up, frightened now. “Mommy?”
I had imagined many things in the seconds after Chloe’s cruel announcement. I had imagined betrayal wearing lipstick and diamonds. I had imagined a triumphant fiancée who knew exactly whose home she had entered and whose child she had displaced.
But this woman’s face held no triumph.
Only devastation.
She pressed one hand against her stomach. “Your wife?”
Dominic whispered, “Marina—”
“No.” She took one step away from him. “No, don’t say my name like that.”
Victor turned to me. “Viv.”
I understood what he was asking.
How far?
How public?
How much?
My answer used to be Dominic’s answer. I used to adjust myself around his needs, his reputation, his timing. I used to think protecting him meant protecting us.
But there was a six-year-old girl beside me who had just learned heartbreak in a hotel lobby.
There was a little boy staring at Sophia as if she were an intruder in his world.
And there was a woman in ivory realizing the foundation under her future had been painted glass.
“No more secrets,” I said.
Dominic inhaled sharply. “Vivienne, please. We should talk privately.”
“We should have talked privately years ago.”
A flash of pain crossed his face. “I was going to tell you.”
“When? Before or after your engagement toast?”
Marina’s head snapped toward him. “Engagement toast?”
He looked trapped. “It’s complicated.”
Victor gave a quiet, humorless breath. “It usually is when fraud, bigamy, and corporate misrepresentation meet in formalwear.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened. “This has nothing to do with you.”
Victor’s eyes hardened. “You made my sister cry in front of her child. That was the last moment this had nothing to do with me.”
Guests had gathered now, forming a loose crescent around the lobby despite hotel staff’s attempts to move them along. Phones appeared, quickly lowered when Victor’s associates looked their way. The air hummed with scandal.
But I barely heard it.
I was watching Marina.
Her fingers trembled as she touched Elliot’s hair. “How long?” she asked Dominic.
He said nothing.
“How long?” she repeated.
I answered because he would not. “Dominic and I have been married for eight years.”
Marina’s face lost even more color. “Eight?”
Sophia whispered, “Mommy, can we go home?”
Everything inside me snapped back into place.
Not healed.
Not whole.
But clear.
“Yes,” I said immediately. “We can.”
Dominic lurched forward. “Sophia, wait—”
My daughter flinched.
It was small. A tiny recoil of her shoulders.
Dominic saw it.
So did I.
The pain on his face was real. I did not doubt that. But pain was not the same as accountability. Regret was not the same as repair. Love, if it had ever been love, was not enough when it arrived wrapped in lies.
I lifted Sophia into my arms. She was getting too big for me to carry easily, but I held her anyway. Her face tucked against my neck, warm tears soaking into my collar.
Victor stepped beside me. “Car is out front.”
Chloe’s voice suddenly cracked through the tension. “Dominic, say something.”
It was a desperate instruction, not a request.
Dominic looked at her.
And in that single glance, I saw something pass between them.
Not romance.
Not loyalty.
Fear.
Chloe was not merely a secretary who had enjoyed humiliating me.
She knew things.
Maybe everything.
Victor saw it too.
His expression changed by a fraction.
Marina noticed as well. Her eyes narrowed through her tears. “What does she have to do with this?”
Chloe stiffened. “Nothing.”
The lie was too quick.
Elliot began to cry softly. Marina bent and gathered him close. Her ivory gown pooled around them like spilled moonlight. “It’s okay,” she whispered, though her own voice was breaking. “I’ve got you.”
Sophia lifted her head from my shoulder at the sound of another child crying.
For all her hurt, all her confusion, my daughter looked at Elliot with concern.
Then she held out the paper necklace.
Not to Dominic.
To the boy.
“You can have it,” she whispered. “It helps when you’re sad.”
The lobby fell quiet.
Elliot stared at her through wet lashes. He looked at Marina, who nodded faintly, stunned. Then he reached out with careful fingers and took the bent little necklace.
Dominic made a sound like something breaking in his chest.
I could not look at him.
Because Sophia’s kindness, offered from the center of her own heartbreak, was more grace than any adult in that lobby deserved.
Victor placed a hand lightly at my back. “Let’s go.”
We moved toward the doors.
Behind us, Dominic said my name again.
This time, I did not turn around.
The rain had slowed to a mist by the time we reached the car. The city lights blurred across the wet pavement, gold and red and silver, as if the whole world had been crying and was trying to pretend it had not.
Inside the black sedan, Sophia curled against me, exhausted. Victor sat across from us, his phone lighting silently in his hand every few seconds.
I knew those messages.
Lawyers. Analysts. Investigators. People who could trace shell companies before dessert was served.
But Victor did not make calls. Not yet.
He only watched Sophia.
After a few minutes, she whispered, “Is Daddy married to that lady too?”
I closed my eyes.
There were questions a mother should never have to answer in a moving car under city lights.
“I don’t know exactly what Daddy told her,” I said carefully.
“But he lied?”
My throat tightened. “Yes, sweetheart. He lied.”
“To me too?”
I brushed her hair with my fingers. “He made choices that hurt us. That doesn’t mean the love you felt was fake.”
Sophia thought about that.
Children searched for truth with both hands. They did not care whether adults were comfortable.
“Did he stop loving me?”
“No.” The answer came from my soul before my mind. “No, Sophia. Adults can be very wrong and still love someone. But love has to be honest to be safe.”
She rested her cheek against my coat. “I don’t feel safe with him right now.”
Victor’s jaw tightened.
I kissed the top of her head. “Then you don’t have to be with him right now.”
She nodded slowly.
The sedan moved through downtown toward the river, away from the hotel, away from the ballroom where Dominic’s future had been decorated with flowers and lies.
Victor finally spoke. “You’re coming to the house.”
I looked at him. “Victor—”
“No debate tonight.”
“I can handle this.”
“I know.” His voice softened. “That’s why I’m not asking whether you can. I’m asking you to let us stand beside you while you do.”
The words slipped past the armor I had been building since Chloe’s first smirk.
Let us stand beside you.
For years, I had mistaken independence for silence. I had thought refusing my family’s help made my marriage more authentic, more mine. I had wanted to prove that I could build a life outside the Sterling name.
Maybe I had.
But tonight, that life had split open, and the people who loved me were not asking to own my pain.
They were asking to carry some of it.
I nodded once.
Victor looked out the window, giving me privacy for the tears that finally escaped.
Sterling House sat behind iron gates on a quiet stretch of old trees and stone walls, less a mansion than a small piece of family history stubbornly preserved in a city that kept replacing memory with glass towers. Warm lights glowed in the windows. The fountain in the circular drive had been turned off for the storm, but rainwater still shimmered in its basin.
The front door opened before the car stopped.
My mother stood beneath the portico in a cream cardigan, her silver hair pulled loosely back, her face lined with worry.
Behind her were my brothers.
All of them.
Adrian, the senator, with his tie loosened and sleeves rolled up. Marcus, still in a suit from whatever financial battlefield he had left behind. And Victor, beside me, opening the car door before the driver could.
Sophia blinked sleepily. “Grandma?”
My mother reached for her. “Come here, my darling.”
Sophia went into her arms and immediately began to cry again.
Not the shocked, confused tears from the hotel.
These were safer tears.
The kind that came when a child realized someone else was strong enough to hold the sadness with them.
My mother carried her inside, murmuring nonsense comforts the way she had when I was little. Warm milk. Dry socks. A blanket from the blue room. Nothing grand. Nothing strategic.
Just love made practical.
Adrian approached me first.
He did not speak.
He simply wrapped his arms around me.
My oldest brother smelled faintly of cedar and rain. He had once taught me to ride a bicycle in this very driveway, running behind me until I shouted that he could let go. He had not let go until he was sure I would not fall.
Tonight, he held me as if he wished he had never let go at all.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I shook my head against his shoulder. “You warned me.”
“I didn’t want to be right.”
Marcus stood nearby, his face unusually open. “None of us did.”
I pulled back, wiping my cheeks. “How bad is it?”
The brothers exchanged glances.
Victor answered. “Worse than an affair. Possibly worse than bigamy.”
My stomach sank. “What does that mean?”
“Inside,” Adrian said. “Sophia shouldn’t hear this.”
We moved into the library after I checked on my daughter. She was upstairs in my childhood room, wrapped in a quilt, my mother beside her reading from an old book of fairy tales. Sophia’s eyes were swollen, but her breathing had steadied.
When she saw me in the doorway, she lifted one hand.
I crossed the room and kissed it.
“Are you leaving?” she asked.
“No. I’m just downstairs.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
She studied my face with solemn eyes far older than six. “Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“Was Elliot sad because of Daddy too?”
I sat on the edge of the bed. “I think he was.”
She looked down at the quilt. “He can keep the necklace.”
“I know.”
“Maybe he needs it more.”
My heart ached with pride and grief at once. “You have a very kind heart.”
Sophia leaned into my palm. “Can kind hearts break?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “But they can heal too.”
“Do they look the same after?”
I thought of my mother downstairs. My brothers. Myself at twenty-four, believing love meant sacrifice without boundaries. Myself now, with rain in my hair and truth in my hands.
“No,” I said. “Sometimes they grow stronger in the places they had to mend.”
Sophia seemed to consider that. Then she nodded, as if accepting a difficult lesson, and turned back toward my mother’s voice.
When I entered the library, the air felt different.
The Sterling men were not speaking like brothers now.
They were speaking like a war room.
Documents had already appeared on the long mahogany table. Printed emails. Corporate filings. A tablet displaying transaction chains. A legal pad filled with Victor’s precise handwriting.
Marcus tapped a page. “Dominic’s company received emergency capital injections over the last five years through three holding entities.”
I nodded. “From us.”
“Indirectly, yes. But someone inside Vale Dynamics appears to have reclassified portions of that money as personal founder equity.”
I stared at him. “Dominic?”
“We don’t know yet,” Victor said.
Adrian’s expression was grim. “But his board may believe he personally secured funds he never had. That affects valuation, promotion, executive compensation, and tonight’s merger announcement.”
“Merger?” I asked.
Marcus looked up. “You didn’t know?”
I laughed once, softly. “Apparently there are many things I didn’t know.”
Victor slid a photograph across the table.
It showed Dominic standing beside an older man with white hair and a woman I recognized from society pages. Between them stood Marina, smiling, Elliot in her arms.
“Marina Bellamy,” Victor said. “Daughter of Arthur Bellamy. Bellamy Group is finalizing acquisition terms with Vale Dynamics. Dominic’s engagement to Marina wasn’t just personal. It helped sell the idea of continuity between the families.”
The room tilted slightly.
“So he used her too,” I whispered.
“Likely,” Adrian said.
I sat down slowly. “Does she know?”
Victor’s face darkened. “Based on what we saw tonight? No.”
For some reason, that hurt differently.
Marina had stood upstairs in ivory, believing she was stepping into a future. I had walked into the lobby in a simple coat, believing I was surprising my husband. Two women dressed for different versions of love, both led into the same lie.
Marcus turned the tablet toward me. “There’s more.”
I wanted to say no.
But truth did not wait until people felt ready.
On the screen was a birth certificate.
Child: Elliot James Bellamy.
Mother: Marina Claire Bellamy.
Father: Not listed.
My breath caught. “Dominic isn’t on the birth certificate?”
“No,” Victor said.
“But Elliot called him Daddy.”
“Marina may have believed Dominic intended to adopt him after marriage,” Adrian said. “Or Dominic encouraged the child to see him that way.”
I stared at the document. Relief and sorrow tangled together. Elliot was not Dominic’s biological son. That did not erase the damage. In some ways, it sharpened it. Dominic had borrowed fatherhood in two homes and honored it in neither.
“Why would Chloe say ‘his wife and son’?” I asked.
Victor leaned back. “That’s the question.”
Silence settled.
Then Marcus slid over another page.
A company badge photo.
Chloe Maren, executive assistant.
But beneath it was another image, older, grainier. A university event. Chloe standing beside Dominic, both much younger, both smiling at a banner for an entrepreneurship fellowship.
“They knew each other before she worked for him,” Marcus said.
I frowned. “He told me she was hired three years ago through HR.”
“She was. Officially.”
Victor tapped the second photograph. “Unofficially, she has been adjacent to his career for nearly a decade. Fellowships. Startup incubators. Investor meetings. She appears in the background of several key moments.”
A chill moved through me.
Chloe’s cruelty in the lobby had felt personal.
Now I wondered if it was old.
“How did I never see her?” I asked.
Adrian’s voice was gentle. “Because you trusted him.”
It was not an accusation.
That made it worse.
I looked down at my wedding ring. The diamond was modest by Sterling standards because I had insisted on it. Dominic had apologized when he gave it to me, embarrassed he could not afford more.
I had loved him more for that.
Or for what I thought that meant.
My phone vibrated.
Dominic.
Everyone saw the name light the screen.
No one moved.
It rang until it stopped.
Then a message appeared.
Viv, please. I need to explain before Victor ruins everything. You don’t understand what’s really happening.
A second message followed.
Sophia needs her father. Don’t let your family turn her against me.
My hand clenched.
Victor’s eyes flicked to mine. “May I?”
I handed him the phone.
He read the messages without expression, then placed the phone face down on the table. “Do not respond tonight.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
Adrian sat across from me. “Vivienne, what do you want?”
The question startled me.
Not what should we do.
Not what can we prove.
What do you want?
I looked toward the ceiling, imagining Sophia upstairs beneath my old quilt. I thought of her asking whether kind hearts could break. I thought of Elliot accepting a paper necklace from a girl whose life had just collided with his. I thought of Marina’s stunned face in the lobby.
“I want Sophia protected,” I said. “Emotionally first. Legally second. Publicly third.”
Victor nodded.
“I want the truth,” I continued. “All of it. Not revenge dressed up as justice. Not headlines. Truth.”
Marcus looked almost proud.
“And Marina,” I said quietly. “I want someone to make sure she and Elliot are safe from whatever Dominic pulls next. She didn’t know. I’m sure of it.”
Adrian leaned back, studying me. “Even now, you’re thinking of them.”
“Elliot is a child.”
Victor’s voice softened. “So is Sophia.”
“I know.” My voice broke. “I know.”
For a moment, I was no longer steady. I was not a Sterling. Not a wife. Not a woman with powerful brothers and lawyers waiting for instructions.
I was a mother who had watched her daughter offer comfort to another child while her own heart was falling apart.
My brothers let me cry.
No one rushed to fix it.
No one told me to be strong.
And somehow, that made strength return on its own.
Later, after midnight, the house quieted.
Adrian left to make discreet calls. Marcus remained in the library with Victor, following money trails through shell entities and executive disclosures. My mother slept in the armchair beside Sophia’s bed, one hand resting near my daughter’s blanket.
I stood in the hallway outside my childhood room, listening to their breathing.
My phone buzzed again.
This time, the number was unknown.
I almost ignored it.
Then a message appeared.
This is Marina Bellamy. I got your number from the hotel guest form. I’m sorry. I don’t know what he told you, but I need to speak with you. Not for him. For the children.
I stared at the screen.
Another message followed.
There is something wrong. Dominic told my father your family had abandoned you years ago. He said you were unstable. He said Sophia wasn’t safe with you.
The hallway seemed to narrow.
I gripped the phone harder.
A third message arrived.
And Vivienne… Chloe has documents with your signature on them. She said they prove you gave up claims to everything.
My breath stopped.
Documents?
My signature?
I walked quickly toward the library, my bare feet silent on the runner.
Victor looked up the moment I entered. “What happened?”
I handed him the phone.
He read Marina’s messages.
The temperature in his expression dropped.
Marcus stood. “What documents?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I never signed anything.”
Victor’s phone rang before he could answer.
He glanced at the caller ID, then put it on speaker.
A woman’s voice filled the library. Calm, professional, urgent.
“Mr. Sterling, we pulled the archived packet from Vale Dynamics’ legal counsel. There is a spousal consent form attached to the merger file.”
Victor’s eyes locked on mine.
The woman continued, “It bears Vivienne Vale’s signature.”
“That’s impossible,” I said.
Victor leaned toward the phone. “Send it now.”
“Already did.”
Marcus opened his laptop.
An email arrived.
He clicked.
A PDF filled the screen.
I saw my name first.
Vivienne Sterling Vale.
Then the signature at the bottom.
My signature.
Perfectly formed.
Too perfect.
My stomach turned.
Victor’s voice was very quiet. “Vivienne, look at the date.”
I forced my eyes upward.
The document had been signed eleven months ago.
On a day I remembered with painful clarity.
Sophia had been in the hospital with pneumonia.
I had not left her bedside for thirty-six hours.
Marcus whispered, “He forged it.”
Adrian appeared in the doorway behind us, phone still in hand. “Forged what?”
Victor did not look away from the screen. “Her consent to waive spousal interest in Dominic’s equity and future proceeds from the Bellamy acquisition.”
My knees weakened.
Marcus caught the chair and pushed it behind me before I sank into it.
“He tried to erase me,” I said.
Victor’s jaw flexed. “He tried to profit from erasing you.”
The laptop chimed again.
Another email.
The same woman from Victor’s office had sent a second attachment.
“Mr. Sterling,” she said, still on speaker, “there’s one more thing. We found an internal memo from Chloe Maren marked confidential. It references a risk factor named ‘Project Violet.’”
My head lifted.
Violet.
Sophia’s favorite color because Dominic had once called it royal.
Marcus opened the memo.
Lines of text appeared, dense and corporate.
Then one sentence seemed to rise from the page and strike the room silent.
Subject remains unaware of paternal discrepancy. Disclosure risk increases if child medical records are reviewed.
I stared at the words.
At first, they made no sense.
Then too much sense.
Child medical records.
Paternal discrepancy.
Subject.
My voice came out barely audible. “Who is the subject?”
No one answered.
Because all of us knew.
Upstairs, Sophia slept beneath my childhood quilt, trusting the world to make sense by morning.
In the library, surrounded by my brothers and the secrets of my marriage, I looked at the memo again.
Project Violet.
Victor reached for the phone, his face pale with fury and fear.
But before he could speak, my phone lit up one final time.
A new message from Marina.
Vivienne, I found a photo in Dominic’s safe. It’s of Sophia as a newborn.
On the back, he wrote: “She must never know who her real father is.”
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