Minnie flinched as faint knocks sounded from behind the piano, only for her aunt Aurelia to slam the child's hands back onto the keys

Cassian grabbed the pen with trembling, spasming fingers, scribbling his signature across the bottom of each page without reading a single word. When he finished, he dropped the pen, looking up at Everard with the pathetic, pleading gaze of a beaten dog.

"And now?" Cassian whispered. "Do we go?"

Everard did not answer. He turned to Aurelia, untying her hands and tossing the second pen into her lap.

"I won't sign," Aurelia spat, clenching her fists. "Kill me, Everard. Go ahead. Do it in cold blood. Let Honora know what kind of monster she married."

Everard did not raise his voice. He reached over to the workbench, picked up an antique silver hand-mirror that had belonged to their mother, and held it up before Aurelia’s face.

"Look at yourself, Aurelia," Everard said softly. "You think you're a martyr for the family? You spent six months starving a woman in a wall because you were jealous that our father loved her more than he ever loved you. You are not a Vanderley. You are a ghost wearing stolen jewelry."

Aurelia stared into the cracked glass, her breathing turning shallow and ragged as she saw the hollow, venomous creature staring back at her. The defiance broke in her eyes, shattering into a bottomless, bitter despair.

With a shaking hand, she took the pen and signed her name across the parchment.

Everard gathered the documents, slid them back into the manila folder, and tucked it beneath his arm. He looked down at his siblings one last time, his expression completely blank, as though he were looking at discarded trash on the roadside.

"A private cargo vessel leaves my south terminal at five o'clock this morning," Everard said, turning toward the iron door. "It is bound for a mining concession in northern Liberia. You will spend the rest of your lives managing the supply logs in an iron camp four hundred miles from the nearest paved road. If you set foot on American soil again, your bodies will be fed to the smelters."

"Everard!" Aurelia shrieked, thrashing against her ropes. "You can't do this! You’re sending us to a penal colony!"

"I am giving you life," Everard replied without looking back. "Which is significantly more than you gave my wife."

The heavy iron door slammed shut, and the heavy bolt slid home with a sound like a guillotine falling.

Everard climbed the stone steps back up to the main floor. The mansion was dead quiet now. Outside, the rain had begun to fall—a steady, cold October drizzle that washed over the manicured lawns and drummed against the high stained-glass windows of the grand gallery.

In the second-floor library, Keller was waiting, holding an encrypted satellite tablet.

"The catering trucks at the north gate, sir," Keller reported, his voice low and disciplined. "The strike team from Montreal was eliminated without incident. We recovered their communications hardware."

"Did you trace the signal?" Everard asked, walking to the mahogany desk and pouring two fingers of rye into a crystal tumbler.

"Yes, Mr. Vanderley," Keller said, handing him the tablet. "The orders didn't originate from Montreal. The Marasquin family was just contracted muscle. The wire transfers funding this entire operation came from inside the state legislature."

Everard froze, the crystal glass hovering an inch from his lips.