Chapter 8

The conservatory smelled of orchids and wet stone. Vivian stood by the glass wall, still in her emerald gown, her perfect blonde hair coming loose from its chignon. She looked younger without Helena’s hand on her shoulder.

“I heard them,” she said before I could speak. “At ten thirty. Helena and Julian in the study. She was screaming at him because he wanted to call a lawyer. He said the forged guarantee was going to send someone to prison, and she said that was the point.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Vivian’s mouth trembled. “Because she promised me the chair. She said once you were gone, I would be chairwoman. But this morning she told Daphne she was her real successor. She’s been playing us against each other for years.”

“That doesn’t make you innocent.”

“I know.” Vivian reached into her clutch and took out a folded receipt. “I went back after they left. It was on her desk. I photographed it and took the original.”

I unfolded the paper. It was a wire receipt from Black Tern Holdings, dated three weeks earlier, showing sixty-eight million dollars transferred from a Delaware bank into an account titled Helena Kestrel Personal Trust. The same amount. The same date as the Port Blakely sale.

My hand shook. “This is it.”

“She’s going to destroy you,” Vivian said. “She already called an emergency board meeting for eleven ten tonight to vote you out and void the trust. She moved it up because she heard Julian was talking.”

Eleven ten. Less than an hour away.

“Why help me now?”

Vivian’s eyes filled. “Because I finally understood what she meant when she called you administrative support. If she can do that to you, she can do it to any of us. And because I don’t want to watch our father’s company burn for her.”

I wanted to tell her that one receipt did not erase twenty years of silence. But I also needed her. I folded the wire receipt carefully and put it in my portfolio.

“You’ll have to say that in front of the board,” I said.

Vivian nodded. “I will.”

I walked back toward the boardroom with the receipt against my ribs. For the first time since the gala, the weight under my arm felt less like evidence and more like a weapon. Helena had called the meeting to kill me. She had just given me the room where I could kill her.