He truly hadn’t known.

It did not make him innocent.

But it rearranged, in an instant, the entire shape of the story I’d told myself about who had done what to me.

Chapter 9 — Half the Estate

But Delphine wasn’t finished, and what came next silenced even the whispering.

“I did it,” she said, “because if those children ever surfaced, your father’s trust was written to leave them half of the entire family estate.”

Near the stone fountain, the string quartet stopped playing.