Morning light flooded the dining room, harsh and unforgiving.

She walked in. She was wearing a silk robe she found in the closet. It felt like water against her skin.

Cedric was already eating. He was reading the Wall Street Journal on a tablet. He didn't look up.

"Coffee," he said, gesturing to the machine.

She ignored him. She walked to the machine and made herself a double espresso. She took a sip. It was bitter. Good.

Wenfield placed a plate of eggs benedict in front of her. She picked up the knife and fork. She cut the egg. The yolk spilled out. She dissected the bacon with surgical precision.

Cedric slid a piece of paper across the marble table.

"Your allowance," he said. "Buy something decent for tonight. We're seeing my grandmother."

She looked at the paper. It was a check. Signed by Cedric Mullen. The amount line was blank.

A blank check.

The old Chantelle would have squealed. She would have filled in a number with six zeros and run to Bergdorf's.

She looked at Cedric. He was watching her, waiting for the greed. Waiting for her to prove she was just another gold digger.

She reached for the silver lighter sitting next to his cigarettes.

Click. The flame flared up.

She held the corner of the check to the fire.

Cedric's eyes narrowed.

The paper curled, turning black. The fire ate his signature. She held it until the heat licked her fingertips, then she dropped the ash into her empty coffee cup.

"I don't take payments," she said calmly. "We have a contract. I'll play the wife. I don't need a tip."

Cedric stared at the ash floating in the coffee dregs. He looked... impressed. Or maybe annoyed.

"Fine," he said, standing up. He buttoned his jacket. "Harrison is sending a styling team. Be ready at six. Don't be late."

He walked out.

As soon as the elevator doors closed, she pulled a burner phone from her robe sleeve. She had lifted it from the pocket of the driver the night before.

She dialed a number she hadn't called in three years.

It rang four times.

"Yeah?" A voice answered. Loud music thumped in the background.

"Jules," she said.

Silence. Then, "Edythe? Holy shit. You're alive? I thought Arthur turned you into glue."

"Close," she said. "I need you to check something. Arthur's company accounts. Specifically the offshore ones."

"I can do that. But you gotta pay the toll. Come to the Sterling Club. Tonight."

"I can't. I have a... family engagement."

"After," Jules said. "Back door. Midnight."

"Fine."

She hung up and hid the phone in a hollowed-out book on the shelf.

The doorbell rang. The stylists.

They wheeled in racks of clothes. Pastels. Florals. "Mr. Mullen suggested soft colors," the lead stylist chirped. "To impress the grandmother."

She pushed the rack of pink aside. She went to the back. She pulled out a black velvet gown. It was backless, severe, and elegant.

"This one," she said.

"But... black? For a family dinner?"

"I'm mourning my freedom," she said. "Do my hair up. Tight."

When she walked out of the bedroom at six o'clock, Cedric was waiting in the foyer.

He stopped checking his watch. His eyes traveled from her heels to the severe bun at the nape of her neck.

She looked like a widow who had just buried a rich husband and got away with it.

"You're wearing black," he said.

"It's slimming," she replied. "Shall we?"

He didn't argue. He offered his arm. She took it. His muscles were hard under the suit.

They looked like a power couple. They looked like war.

The Mullen estate in Long Island was less a house and more a mausoleum for the living.

The dining room was silent except for the clinking of silver against china. Twelve people sat at the long table. Aunts, uncles, cousins. They all looked at her like she was a bacteria culture in a petri dish.

"So," Aunt Beatrice sniffed. "You're the Bailey girl. The one who... had the episode."

"I'm feeling much better, thank you," she said, cutting her steak.

At the head of the table sat Grandmother Mullen. She was ninety, confined to a wheelchair, and looked like she ate nails for breakfast. Her eyes were milky with cataracts, but she saw everything.

She hadn't spoken a word to her.

She winced as she reached for her water glass. Her hand trembled. She rubbed her left knee.

She watched her. The way she favored the leg. The swelling around the joint visible even through the thick stocking.

She stood up.

"Edythe," Cedric warned, his voice low. "Sit down."

She ignored him. She walked to the head of the table. The room went deathly silent.

She knelt beside the wheelchair. She didn't kiss her hand. She picked up a napkin, dipped it into a glass of hot water from the tea service, and then grabbed a salt shaker.

"What are you doing?" Beatrice shrieked. "Don't touch her!"

She ignored her and spoke softly to the old woman. "It's humid tonight. The barometric pressure is dropping. The inflammation flares up. It hurts, doesn't it?"

Grandmother Mullen looked down at her. "Like the devil."

"May I?"

She nodded, slightly.

She wrapped the hot, damp napkin around her knee, creating a makeshift compress. She then gently massaged the area around the joint, using broad, firm strokes that looked more like a folk remedy than a medical procedure. It was a simple technique to increase circulation, something any attentive grandchild might do.

After two minutes, the old woman let out a long breath. Her shoulders dropped.

"Better?" she asked.

"Much," she rasped. She looked at Cedric. "She has good hands. Observant."

She pulled a ring off her finger. It was a square-cut emerald the size of a postage stamp.

"Take it," she said.

The table gasped. Beatrice looked like she was going to choke on her asparagus.

"Grandmother," Cedric said, "That's the matriarch's ring."

"She's your wife, isn't she?" The old woman shoved the ring into her hand. "Don't lose it."

She took the ring. She didn't put it on. She slipped it into her clutch.

"Thank you," she said.

She walked back to her seat. She felt Cedric's eyes burning a hole in the side of her head.

Later, in the garden, Cedric lit a cigarette. The smoke curled into the night air.

"You know remedies," he said. It wasn't a question.

"I spent a year in a sanatorium," she lied smoothly. "You pick things up. The nurses there had all sorts of old tricks."

He studied her. He didn't believe her. But he couldn't prove otherwise.

She checked her watch. 11:30 PM.

"I'm going out," she said.

"Out? It's midnight."

"I have a friend in the city. I need to blow off some steam. Unless I'm a prisoner?"

"Where?"

"The Sterling Club."

Cedric paused. He laughed. A short, dark sound. "The gay bar in Chelsea?"

"Is it?" she feigned innocence. "My friend likes the music."

He relaxed. He thought she was going to dance with drag queens. He didn't know the Sterling Club was the front for the biggest information broker on the East Coast.

"Take the car," he said. "Don't be late."

She got into the back of the Maybach.

"Sterling Club," she told the driver.

As they pulled away, she saw Cedric watching from the terrace. He thought he had bought a pet. He had no idea he had let a wolf into the house.

The bass from the Sterling Club rattled her teeth before she even got out of the car.

She walked past the line of people waiting behind the velvet rope. She went to the alleyway around the back. There was a camera mounted above a rusty steel door.

She held up three fingers. Then two. Then a fist.

Buzz. The lock disengaged.

Jules was waiting inside. He was wearing a purple silk suit that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else. On him, it looked dangerous.

"Edythe."

They didn't hug. They bumped fists.

"You look expensive," he said, eyeing the dress.

"Camouflage," she said.

He led her through the kitchen, past the vats of grease, into a soundproof office in the back.

He poured two shots of tequila.

"Arthur," he said, sliding a flash drive across the desk. "He's broke. The company is bleeding cash. That's why he needs the Mullen merger. He's been bribing FDA officials to fast-track a new drug that doesn't work. If that comes out, he goes to federal prison."

She took the drive. "This is it. This is the nail in the coffin."

"Be careful, Edythe. Arthur is a cornered rat. Rats bite."

Suddenly, the music outside stopped.

Screams.

"Someone call 911!"

Jules cursed. "Not tonight. I have the mayor's son in the VIP booth."

She was already moving. She pushed past him, out of the office, onto the balcony overlooking the dance floor.

The strobe lights were cutting through the darkness. In the center of the floor, a circle had formed.

A man was on the ground. He was clutching his chest. His face was turning blue.

"He's overdosing!" someone yelled. "Give him Narcan!"

A bouncer was trying to do CPR. He was pushing too fast, too hard.

She looked at the man's neck. The veins were distended. His chest wasn't rising on the left side.

It wasn't an overdose. It wasn't a heart attack.

It was a tension pneumothorax. A collapsed lung. Probably from a broken rib in the mosh pit.

If the bouncer kept doing CPR, the pressure would build up and crush his heart. He would be dead in two minutes.

"Stop!" she yelled, but her voice was drowned out by the panic.

She looked at Jules. "I have to go down there."

"You can't," Jules hissed. "You're Edythe Mullen now. If you get caught on camera doing something crazy, your cover is blown."

"If I don't, he dies."

She didn't wait for permission. She grabbed a napkin from a table and tied it around her face, covering her nose and mouth.

"Kill the lights," she told Jules. "Give me strobes only."

Jules signaled the DJ booth. The house lights died. The strobes went wild, turning the room into a flickering nightmare.

She vaulted over the railing. She dropped twelve feet, landing in a crouch. Her ankles protested, but the adrenaline masked the pain.

She pushed through the crowd. She shoved the bouncer away.

"Get back!" she roared.

She knelt beside the dying man.