I have never been able to thank him.

I have wished, so many times, that I had listened to the thing he never quite said.

But he protected me anyway, the way he always had, and the inheritance Julian schemed to steal turned out to be the very fortress that saved us.

Chapter 8 — He Wanted My Son

I downloaded everything.

Every frame of video, every second of audio, every hour of it, to three separate cloud accounts and an encrypted drive I would not let out of my sight — because a man who plans this carefully also plans for discovery, and I was not going to be the woman whose only proof mysteriously vanished.

And then I sat with the full shape of it, alone, in that coffee shop, and made myself look at it squarely.