Annelie lifted a silver serving dome only to find a sponge soaked in gravy instead of dinner

Roderic did not look away from the far end of the table. He stood motionless, his tailored suit hanging straight, his presence blotting out the brilliant light of the chandeliers.

"Gordon," Roderic said. His voice was quiet, yet it cut through the room like a straight razor. "Pick up your phone."

Gordon Vance, a fifty-year-old shipping tycoon and long-time Haversham associate, swallowed hard. His rosy face had gone completely pale, beads of sweat glistening beneath his silvered temples.

"Roderic, please," Gordon stammered, raising both hands in a placating gesture. "I was just checking an offshore freight manifest. You know how volatile the Rotterdam routes are right now."

"Pick it up," Roderic repeated. "Turn the glass toward me."

"Roderic, this is an engagement banquet," Gordon pleaded, looking around at the frozen guests for an ally. "There are city councilmen here. There are federal judges. We don't conduct business like this in front of our families."

"Do you want me to send Silas to pick it up for you?" Roderic asked.

Gordon flinched. Trembling, his manicured fingers reached for the device on the linen. Slowly, reluctantly, he flipped the screen right-side up.

The bright display reflected off Gordon’s gold cufflinks. It was an encrypted private streaming application. The banner at the top of the room read: The Haversham Heiress: Day 3.

Beneath the video feed, a live chat room was scrolling with rapid, merciless speed.

‘Did she eat the sponge yet?’

‘Offer her a dry crust if she barks like a dog.’

‘Twenty thousand says she cries for her dead mother before dessert.’

Roderic looked down at Delphine’s phone in his own hand. The interface matched. The subscriber count displayed over four hundred active viewers, all streaming the live broadcast from Delphine’s camera.

Annelie buried her face deeper into Roderic’s coat, her little body trembling. "She said if I ate the real food in the fridge, the monsters would take you away, Daddy."

Roderic looked down at his daughter. "Where were you kept, Annelie?"

"In the dark pantry upstairs," Annelie whispered. "With the cold tiles. Auntie Delphine locked the gold latch from the outside."

Roderic looked back at Delphine, who was clutching her reddened cheek, her eyes darting toward the exits.

"Gordon," Roderic said, his tone chillingly conversational. "How much did you pay for access to this channel?"

Gordon’s breath hitched in his throat. "Roderic, I swear to God, I didn't set it up! I was invited to the link! It came through an anonymous broker on the dark web!"

"How much did you pay, Gordon?" Roderic took a slow, measured step forward.

"Fifty... fifty thousand," Gordon choked out, pressing himself flat against his high-backed chair. "It was an auction! They said it was a loyalty test! They said if you couldn't even feed your own daughter, you were unfit to run the port authority!"

"Loyalty test," Roderic murmured.

"Yes! They said the syndicate needed a stronger hand!" Gordon cried out. "Roderic, I’ve been with your family for twenty years! I funded your father’s defense fund in ninety-eight!"

"My father is dead," Roderic said, stopping two feet from Gordon’s chair. "And you paid fifty thousand dollars to watch my three-year-old daughter starve."

"It was just business!" Gordon shrieked.

Roderic reached out, seized Gordon by his silk necktie, and hauled the two-hundred-pound man clean out of his seat. Gordon’s champagne flute shattered against the table as Roderic slammed the man’s face down into the white linen, pinning his jaw with one heavy, ringed hand.

"Silas," Roderic commanded without raising his voice.