The echo of my own voice faded into the quiet of the master suite.

Heavy footsteps thumped against the hardwood of the hallway.

Adrian.

I froze, my hand hovering over the hidden drawer beneath my vanity. The rhythmic sound of his leather shoes grew louder, each step a heavy strike against the floorboards. I knew his walk perfectly. The slight drag of his left heel. The hurried, impatient pace.

He paused right outside my door.

The brass handle remained still. No knock came. I watched the slight shadow beneath the doorframe, waiting to see if he would finally enter the room we were supposed to share.

For a single, pathetic second, I thought he might turn the knob. I thought he might walk in, look me in the eye, and offer some kind of explanation for the ten women who had paraded through our home.

But the shadow shifted. His strides resumed, fading toward the grand staircase.

He never checked on me. He never looked back.

I exhaled a sharp breath and pulled my hand away from the secret compartment. Instead, I reached for the heavy, navy-blue velvet box sitting at the far corner of the dressing table.

Dust coated the elegant lid. I wiped the gray film away with my thumb and flipped the metal hinge open.

A blinding arrangement of flawless white diamonds and a massive center sapphire caught the morning light.

One hundred million dollars.

Three months ago, Vivienne had sent the first woman into Adrian's study under my name, sparking a vicious screaming match that ended with Adrian throwing the girl out and accusing me of acting like his personal pimp. The very next morning, he had his security team drop this hundred-million-dollar financial band-aid onto my vanity to coax me into silence, a pathetic substitute for an actual apology.

"Adrian insisted you have this, Seraphina," Vivienne said, stepping into the doorway of the master suite.

She held the velvet box open, the cold glare of the hundred-million-dollar sapphire catching the morning light.

I took one look at the massive jewel and backed out of the room. "Keep it."

When the second girl had brushed Adrian's knuckles last October, he had recoiled, retched into a wastebasket, and bought me a sprawling countryside manor the next morning, swearing, "I will only ever have one woman by my side."

Two hours later, I stood in the cavernous, empty foyer of that exact property.

My shoes tapped against the bare marble floor. I held the thick parchment of the property deed. My name sat at the top in bold black ink. I had visited this place exactly once.

The heavy oak front door swung open.

Lucas strode into the hall. He stopped a few feet away, his gaze sweeping over the dust-sheet-covered furniture.

"You actually came here," my cousin said, his voice bouncing off the vaulted ceiling.

"I needed to see what a lie looks like in real estate form," I replied. I tossed the deed onto a covered console table. "Take it. Sell it. Move the money into the offshore account."

Lucas picked up the document. He scanned the legal print, his brow furrowing. "I cannot liquidate this yet, Seraphina. It will trigger an alert to Adrian's financial team."

"I do not care what alerts them. I want it gone."

"You have to care." Lucas stepped closer, his footsteps loud against the stone. "Three weeks. That is all we have left. Your father's navigation algorithm patent expires on the thirtieth. Hale Aerospace's legal team watches every major asset tied to your name. If you liquidate this estate today, Adrian's risk office will know you are preparing to leave before we are ready to move."

"Then bury it," I said. "Put the deed in a holding trust. Keep the keys, keep the accounts, keep every dollar out of my sight until the deadline passes."

Lucas studied me for a long moment. The dust sheets behind him shifted in the draft, making the empty manor seem to breathe around us.

"You are really done," he said quietly.

"I was done the moment he walked past my door this morning."

My phone buzzed in my hand before Lucas could answer. An unknown number flashed across the screen, followed by a single message.

The dancer wants to meet. She says Vivienne forged your name.

I looked from the glowing screen to the deed lying on the covered table.

"Find me a quiet place downtown," I told Lucas. "If the tenth woman is finally willing to talk, I want to hear every word."