Marisela could see that plainly; it aged him ten years in an hour.

But he did it, because in his hard old view of the world a person who would risk a baby to feed her vanity had placed herself outside the protection of the name, and the name was the one thing Beaufort Ashworth had never in his life been willing to cheapen.

Marisela did not come to love her father-in-law.

But she left that room, for the first time, respecting him.

Chapter 20 — No Noise

Over the months that followed, the party footage and the text logs and Ophelia’s audio recording all went where they belonged, which was to a family court, and nowhere else.