Maiselle watched in shock as Hector’s fiancée Odette dumped her entire dinner into her open suitcase and coldly declared she would eat at an orphanage.

The private library smelled of aged paper, leather, and impending death.

Odette sat cuffed to the brass rung of Hector’s heavy mahogany desk. Her emerald dress was torn at the hem, her diamond earrings tangled in her disheveled raven hair. Across the room, Donovan stood with his arms crossed, watching her with dead, unblinking eyes.

The double doors clicked open, and Hector entered. He did not look at her right away. He walked over to the antique bar cart, poured himself two fingers of pure mineral water, and drank it in silence.

"You're making a mistake, Hector," Odette hissed, though the tremble in her lower lip betrayed her. "You have no proof Julian was involved. You're taking the babble of a terrified child—"

Hector set the glass down with a sharp clack.

He walked over to the desk, pulled open Odette’s alligator-skin handbag, and tipped its contents onto the blotter. Along with lipstick, gold compacts, and car keys fell an encrypted satellite burner phone and a folded legal document bearing an official blue ribbon.

Hector unfolded the parchment.

It was an emergency petition for legal guardianship filed in the Albany Family Court, dated that very afternoon. It declared Maiselle Ravenswick an unacknowledged minor of an intestate, deceased decedent, granting sole fiduciary authority over the Ravenswick Estate Trust to Odette and Julian Ravenswick as co-trustees. Appended to the rear was a transfer order directing the child to St. Jude’s Home for Destitute Minors in upstate New York pending probate adjudication.

Hector read every line, his face expressionless.

"St. Jude’s," Hector said softly. "The state asylum forty miles outside Albany. An institution with no records, no visitors, and an infant mortality rate of twelve percent."

Odette swallowed hard. "Hector... Julian promised me—"

"Julian promised you forty percent of the shipping revenues," Hector said, tossing the document onto the desk. "And you thought that once I was cold, you could sign the child away and live like an empress."

He leaned down, placing both palms flat on the desk, bringing his face inches from hers. The scent of her expensive French perfume was completely overshadowed by the smell of cold, terrified sweat.

"Where is the van, Odette?"

"I don't know!" she gasped, shrinking back.

Hector reached out with his left hand, caught her chin in an iron grip, and squeezed until her teeth ground together. "Donovan, call the south gatehouse. Tell the boys to drag the driver from the black van into the courtyard. If he resists, shoot him through the kneecaps."

"No! Wait!" Odette shrieked, tears finally pouring down her rosy cheeks, smudging her dark eyeliner into hideous black streaks. "He's at the service barn! He was supposed to take her at midnight! Julian has the keys to the trust vault in Manhattan! Please, Hector, he said if you married me and had another child, neither of us would ever see a dime of the family money!"

Hector released her chin. He wiped his fingers on a linen handkerchief as if he had touched raw sewage.

"You had everything, Odette," Hector said, looking at her with cold disgust. "You had my name. You had this estate. You had my protection. But you looked at my daughter and saw an obstacle."

He reached out, caught the twelve-carat emerald-cut diamond ring on her finger, and slid it off with a brutal, wrenching twist.

"Donovan," Hector commanded.