“You will all leave immediately.”
“No,” Marian said.
Something brittle cracked through Victoria’s composure.
“Do you understand whose house this is?”
“Precisely.”
Marian opened the folder. “At midnight, the controlling documents for Sterling Maritime transfer into a temporary trust pending investigation. The transfer was authorized by the board this afternoon.”
Julian’s head lifted.
“What investigation?”
Marian looked at him, then at Elena.
“Elena, would you like to explain, or shall I?”
Victoria took one step forward.
“What did you do?”
Elena’s hand covered her stomach. Beneath her palm, the baby shifted, a small flutter against the fear filling the room.
“I found the ledger.”
Julian looked at her.
“What ledger?”
“The one hidden behind the false wall in the nursery.”
Victoria’s mouth tightened.
“That room was locked.”
“I know.”
“You broke into my house?”
“Our house,” Julian said.
Victoria gave him a disbelieving look. “You would take her word over mine?”
Julian’s eyes were wet, but his voice had steadied.
“I don’t know what to believe. That’s why I want to see the evidence.”
Elena looked at him then. For one fragile second, she saw the boy Victoria had raised: the son who had learned to apologize before he understood what he had done, who had spent his childhood reading his mother’s silences like weather.
Then she saw the man he had become during the last hour.
He was afraid.
But he was standing beside her.
“The ledger listed payments,” Elena said. “Shell companies. Port officials. Insurance inspectors. Families who were told their husbands died in accidents that were never accidents.”
