“Stop.”
Gideon moved. He put himself between me and Vivian.
The look he gave me was half shock, half rage.
“I don’t care who you are. You put your hands on someone in front of me? You think the Hawthorne name means nothing?”
His little knight-in-shining-armor routine made me want to throw up.
“I couldn’t care less what the Hawthorne name means.”
I lifted a hand toward the stage.
The auctioneer came running, the crimson bracelet cradled in both hands, trembling.
I took it and slid it onto my left wrist.
The rubies caught the light and burned.
The stones sat right against the scar on my wrist, the one the mines had given me. The colors matched.
Through her splayed fingers, Vivian saw the bracelet. Her eyes blew wide.
“No. That’s mine.”
The words ripped out of her with an animalistic shriek.
“That’s a Langford heirloom. Take it off!”
“Yours?”
I laughed. It lacked any warmth.
“Vivian, you’ve been playing the true Langford heiress so long you forgot you were just a stand-in.”
I closed the distance between us.
“Twenty years ago, the real Langford heiress in Aldercrest was a woman named Celia Langford.”
“Your half-sister. The woman you spent your whole life trying to destroy.”
The name hit Gideon like a fist to the chest.
He whipped around to face Vivian.
“Celia… why are you bringing up Celia?”
His voice cracked on the name.
“Celia was in the fire. She was already…”
“She died. Right?”
I finished the sentence he’d been telling himself for twenty years.
“Gideon. What a faithful man you turned out to be.”
I let the contempt show on my face.
“A beam pinned your leg in that fire. My mother, Celia Langford, pulled you out. She could have died doing it.”
“She used her body as a shield. The fire burned her back down to the bone.”
“When she passed out, she was still clutching your shirt.”
I pointed past him at Vivian.
“But when you opened your eyes, it was Vivian standing over you. Wearing my mother’s coat.”
“She claimed she was the one who saved you.”
“And you believed her. You worshipped her as your savior. You watched her marry into the Mercer family and become Mrs. Mercer.”
Gideon’s chest was heaving.
He searched Vivian’s face, looking for something that would prove me wrong.
“Vivian. Is it true?”
Vivian was shaking her head, tears and wine streaking down her face.
“Gideon, don’t listen to her.”
“I saved you. I have the scars. The medical records prove it!”
“She’s making it all up. She wants to tear us apart.”
Arden dragged herself off the floor, one hand pressed to her swollen cheek.
“Mr. Hawthorne, you’re going to take a stranger’s word over my mother’s?”
“Her scars are real. That’s all the proof anyone needs.”
Watching them squirm was starting to bore me.
I snapped my fingers.
Evan Shaw walked in from outside, black briefcase in hand.
He opened the case and placed a file in my hand.
“Burn scars?”
I threw the file in Vivian’s face.
“You mean the surgically fabricated ones? The skin grafts you paid for at a private clinic on Lake Ashford, three months after the fire?”