The zeros kept coming.
The machine chimed.
[Asset verification: approved.]
Voss’s hands were shaking.
The card reader slipped from his grip and hit the carpet.
His legs buckled. He dropped to his knees in front of me.
“Manager Voss, what are you doing?”
Arden’s voice shot up from below.
“Is the machine broken?”
Voss didn’t hear her.
His breathing came in ragged pulls. Sweat soaked through his shirt.
He looked up at me the way you’d look at something that shouldn’t exist. His mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out.
“This… this is…”
A man in his position knew exactly what he was holding.
The highest-level financial credential in the Pacific Rim.
The Gryphon Black Card.
Fewer than five existed in the world.
Each one backed by a financial empire large enough to move a national economy.
The shadow player who controlled Seabrook’s ports and monopolized the Suncoast mines owned one of them.
“Now.”
I stepped past Voss where he knelt and started down the stairs.
One step at a time.
Each footstep rang through the silence.
“So. Is my bid live?”
The auctioneer stood frozen on stage, ashen.
The verification confirmation had already come through from backstage.
The kind of clearance no one in this room could override.
“It… it’s active.”
He raised the gavel. His voice shook.
“The bidder has placed an unlimited bid. The crimson ruby bracelet is hers.”
The room erupted.
Arden’s face went blank.
Gideon’s jaw set.
Vivian watched me descend, step by step, and something in her started to come apart. Her whole body trembled.
I reached the first floor.
The bodyguards and businessmen who’d blocked my path parted like the Red Sea.
The contempt in their eyes had been replaced by something closer to terror.
I walked straight for the Mercers.
Arden’s phone was still raised, screen dark.
“Voss made a mistake. He had to.”
She was grasping.
“You hacked the system. That’s what this is.”
“Mr. Hawthorne, she’s a fraud. She has to be.”
Gideon didn’t look at Arden.
He was studying me now. Really looking.
Someone with this kind of money didn’t come from nowhere.
“Who are you?”
The arrogance had bled completely out of Gideon’s voice.
“The Hawthornes carry weight in both Aldercrest and Seabrook. I don’t recall crossing paths with anyone at your level.”
I stopped three steps away.
I looked past Arden. Past Gideon. My eyes landed on Vivian.
Every drop of color had drained from her face.
Her manicured fingers were strangling her silk shawl, knuckles bone-white.
“Mrs. Mercer.”
I studied that face. It almost looked like my mother’s, if you stripped away the lies.
“That speech you gave was beautiful.”
“But twenty years ago, when you locked my mother in a shipping container and sold her to the Suncoast mines, where was all that goodness then?”
The hall went vacuum-silent.
Vivian’s breath caught.
She staggered backward and hit the chair behind her.
“You… what did you just say?”
Her voice cracked wide open. Pure panic.
“I don’t know you. Don’t you dare slander me.”
Arden threw herself in front of Vivian like a shield.
“How dare you?”
“Shipping container? What mother? You think just because you’ve got money you can walk in here and throw lies at my family?”
“Security! Get her out of here!”
Nobody moved.
The hall was stone dead.
Up on the second floor, Voss was still on his knees.
Something shifted in Gideon’s face.
He turned to Vivian.
“Vivian. What shipping container?”
“Whose daughter is she?”
Vivian shook her head so hard her pearls swayed. Tears ran down her face.
“Gideon, I don’t know. I swear I don’t know.”
“She’s insane. She’s trying to shake us down.”
“Get her away from me. Please. The baby. I’m in so much pain.”
She doubled over, clutching her stomach, swaying like she might collapse.
The same trick she’d used her whole life.
Play the victim, and my mother would cave. Play the victim, and Gideon would melt.
Too bad for her. I wasn’t my mother.
I lifted a glass of red wine off a passing tray.
I tilted my wrist.
Red wine hit Vivian’s face like a slap.
She screamed.
Wine dripped from her hair and bled into her ivory gown.
“What are you doing?!”
Arden came at me swinging.
I sidestepped and backhanded her across the face.
The crack echoed off every wall.
Arden hit the floor. Half her face was already swelling.
“I’m just helping Mrs. Mercer clear her head.”
I set the empty glass down on the nearest table.
“Take a good look at that red.”
“Doesn’t it look just like the fire that burned through the wedding venue the night you stole my mother’s life?”