Preston Blackburn walked into the foyer like he owned the air everyone else was breathing. His suit was tailored to within an inch of its life, not a crease in sight.

He stopped when he saw the clothes scattered on the floor. His gaze moved to Dominique, then to the security guards, and finally, it landed on Aurelia.

For a second, his expression softened. Just a fraction. A memory of who they used to be.

Then Dominique launched herself at him.

"Preston!" she sobbed, burying her face in his chest. "Thank god you're here. It's awful. She stole it. She stole your grandmother's ring!"

Preston stiffened. He peeled Dominique off him gently and looked at the floor. The sapphire ring sat there, accusingly bright against the white marble.

He picked it up. He turned it over in his fingers.

"Aurelia?" he asked. His voice wasn't angry. It was disappointed. Which was worse. "Is this true? If you needed money... you could have just asked me."

The pity in his voice hit Aurelia like a physical blow. It knocked the wind out of her. He believed it. He actually believed she would stoop this low.

Something inside her snapped. The hurt burned away, leaving behind a cold, hard clarity. It was the focus she found in the operating room when blood was spraying and monitors were screaming.

She stepped over her scattered clothes. She walked right up to Preston.

"Give me the ring," she said.

"Aurelia, don't make this worse," Preston said, pulling his hand back.

"Give. Me. The. Ring."

She snatched it from his palm before he could react. Catherine gasped. The guards stepped forward, but Aurelia held the ring up to the light streaming through the transom window.

"If I stole this," she said, her voice cutting through the room, "and if it had been bouncing around in my bag with my keys and water bottle, the gold band would have micro-scratches. Gold is soft."

She tilted the ring. "It's pristine."

She ran her thumb over the sapphire. She brought her finger down and showed it to Preston.

"See this residue?" she asked.

Preston squinted. There was a faint, white smudge on her fingertip.

"It's white powder," Aurelia said. She rubbed it between her fingers and sniffed it. "Ammonia and chalk. It's silver polish."

She turned on her heel and pointed at the housekeeper, Mrs. Higgins, who was hovering by the kitchen door, wringing her hands in her apron.

"Mrs. Higgins," Aurelia said sharply. "You polished the silverware this morning, didn't you?"

Mrs. Higgins jumped. "I... yes, Miss Aurelia. For the party."

Aurelia walked over to her. She grabbed the woman's hand. Mrs. Higgins tried to pull away, but Aurelia held firm.

"Look at her cuticles," Aurelia said to the room. "White residue. The same polish."

She turned back to Dominique. "If I stole it, my fingerprints would be on it. Maybe yours, Preston. But I bet if we swab this ring right now, we'll find Mrs. Higgins' prints all over it. And underneath that, a layer of fresh polish."

Dominique's face faltered. The sobbing victim act cracked. "That proves nothing! Mrs. Higgins probably cleaned it!"

"You don't clean platinum and sapphire with silver polish," Aurelia said. "It damages the setting. Mrs. Higgins knows that. She's been here twenty years. Unless she was in a rush. Unless someone told her to grab it and plant it immediately."

Preston looked at Mrs. Higgins. The woman was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering.

"Mrs. Higgins?" Preston asked.

"I... I didn't want to..." the housekeeper stammered, her eyes darting to Dominique.

"This is slander!" Catherine shrieked. "Preston, she's manipulating you! She's always been jealous of Dominique!"

Aurelia dropped Mrs. Higgins' hand. She pulled her phone from her pocket.

"You know what else is interesting?" Aurelia said, tapping the screen. "I set up the smart home system in this house three years ago. You guys never revoked my credentials. And I always build in a back door. For emergencies."

She opened the app. She tapped on the 'Library' camera feed history.

"Let's see what happened twenty minutes ago."

Aurelia held the phone up. The screen was small, but the resolution was 4K.

On the video, Mrs. Higgins walked into the coat closet area. She looked terrified. She was holding the ring in a tissue. She knelt by Aurelia's tote bag, unzipped the side pocket, and dropped the ring in.

Then, Dominique's voice came through the phone's speaker, tinny but unmistakable.

"Hurry up! Leave the zipper open a bit. Make it look sloppy."

The silence in the foyer was heavy, suffocating.

Preston stared at the phone. The color drained from his face. He looked at Dominique. It wasn't a look of love. It was a look of horror.

"It's a deepfake!" Dominique yelled, her voice shrill. "She's good with computers! She faked it!"

"It's a cloud stream, Dominique," Preston said quietly. "You can't deepfake a live cloud log in thirty seconds."

Mrs. Higgins collapsed onto the floor, sobbing. "She said she'd fire me! She said she'd make sure I never worked in this town again!"

Catherine stepped forward, her hands fluttering. "Preston, darling, it was just a prank! A sisterly joke! Dominique is just... she's under so much stress with the wedding..."

Aurelia laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound.

"A prank?" she said. She put her phone away. "It's a felony, Mother. Grand larceny and framing someone? That's prison time."

She looked at Preston. "This is what you're marrying. A liar and a criminal. But hey, the merger looks good on paper, right?"

She knelt down and started throwing her clothes back into the suitcase. She didn't fold them. She just shoved them in. She felt dirty just being in this room.

Preston took a step toward her. "Aurelia... I..."

"Don't," she said without looking up.

"I'll drive you," he said. "Let me get you out of here."

"I don't want your ride," Aurelia said. She zipped the bag shut and stood up.

Dominique saw Preston's attention shifting. She let out a small moan, her hand fluttering to her forehead.

"Oh god," she whispered. "I feel... faint..."

She crumpled toward the floor. It was a graceful fall, practiced.

"Dominique!" Catherine screamed. "Her heart! Someone call 911!"

Preston turned, instinct kicking in, reaching out to catch her.

Aurelia didn't even blink. She walked past her sister's prone form. She paused for half a second, looking down.

"Her color is fine," Aurelia said flatly. "And her eyelids are fluttering. That means she's conscious and fighting the urge to blink. It's a textbook case of factitious disorder. Or, in layman's terms, a poorly executed tantrum."

She walked to the door. The security guards stepped aside this time, looking at their shoes.

Aurelia pushed the heavy doors open. The sky outside was dark, bruised purple and gray. A storm was coming.

She walked out. The air was cold, biting at her exposed skin. She didn't have a car. The bus stop was two miles away down the private drive.

She started walking. The wheels of her suitcase crunched loudly on the gravel.

Behind her, she heard shouting. Then, the roar of an engine.

She didn't turn around. She just kept walking, head down against the wind.

The silver Aston Martin pulled up beside her, moving at a crawl. The window rolled down.

"Get in, Aurelia," Preston said.

The car blocked her path. The sleek silver metal gleamed under the threatening sky.

"I said get in," Preston repeated. "It's going to pour in about thirty seconds."

A drop of rain hit Aurelia's cheek. It was freezing. She did the math instantly. Getting sick meant buying medicine. Medicine cost money. She had forty-two dollars.

She opened the passenger door and got in.

The interior smelled of expensive leather and the sandalwood cologne Preston had worn for five years. It made her stomach turn. It smelled like memories she wanted to burn.

Preston accelerated. The car purred down the long, tree-lined driveway.

"I'm sorry," he said after a moment. His hands gripped the steering wheel tight. "I didn't know she was capable of that."

"You didn't want to know," Aurelia said, looking out the window at the blurred trees. "There's a difference."

"The merger..." Preston started, then sighed. "My father is pushing hard. The board is nervous. We need the Blanchard assets to stabilize our stock."

"So you're marrying a sociopath for a quarterly earnings report," Aurelia said.

"It's not that simple," Preston said defensively. "And... I thought you had moved on. You disappeared after the hospital incident."

"I was fired, Preston. And stripped of my license. And dumped by my fiancé via text message." She turned to look at him. "Or did you forget that part?"

Preston flinched. "My father sent that text. He took my phone."

"And you let him."

He didn't answer. The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating.

Aurelia reached into her pocket. She pulled out a small, velvet box. She had been carrying it for months, waiting for the right moment to throw it in a river. But this was better.

She placed the box on the dashboard.

"Here," she said. "The real ring. The one you gave me."

Preston glanced at the box. "Keep it. You can sell it. It's worth a lot."

"I don't want your money," Aurelia said. "And I don't want anything that ties me to you or your family."

"Aurelia, please," Preston said, his voice cracking. "I still care about you. If I could... if things were different..."

"But they aren't," she cut him off. "You chose the name. You chose the money. You chose Dominique."

"She's pregnant," Preston blurted out.

Aurelia froze. The air left the car.

"What?"

"She told me this morning," Preston said, staring straight ahead. "That's why she was so emotional. Hormones."

Aurelia let out a short, bitter laugh. "Preston, think. This morning, when I passed her in the hall, she was drinking that green juice she loves. The one with the high-dose parsley and ginger extract. It's a potent emmenagogue. No doctor on earth would let a woman in her first trimester go near it."

"You don't know that," Preston said, but his voice wavered.

"I'm a doctor," Aurelia said. "Or I was. She's lying, Preston. She's locking you down because she knows the trust fund has a clause about heirs. But it's not my problem anymore."

They reached the transit station at the edge of the estate grounds. It was a desolate concrete shelter under a flickering streetlamp.

Aurelia unbuckled her seatbelt. "Unlock the door."

Preston hit the central lock button. The click echoed in the cabin.

"Where will you go?" he asked. "Let me set you up in a hotel. Just for a few nights."

"Unlock the door, Preston, or I will scream."

He looked at her, searching for the girl he used to know. But she was gone. Hardened by betrayal.

He unlocked the door.

Aurelia grabbed her bag and got out. The rain was falling harder now, soaking her coat instantly. She dragged her suitcase out of the trunk.

She didn't look back. Each step was a deliberate severing of a tie, a final, painful cut. The sound of her suitcase wheels on the wet asphalt was the only reply she offered.

He looked up, but she was already walking toward the bus shelter, her head held high, disappearing into the gray curtain of rain.