Maren’s hand came to her mouth. “You’re going to cut her off?”

Before I could answer, the satellite phone on the corner of the desk rang — the private line to the Bellmont estate in Reno. I picked it up and pressed it to my ear and said nothing, waiting.

“Elliot.” Cold, aristocratic, without a trace of warmth.

Victoria Bellmont.

She didn’t ask if I was safe. She didn’t mention the airport, or the operative who’d left it with a broken arm.

“You are making a monumental mistake,” she said, with the absolute confidence of a woman who’d ruled her world for seventy years. “You are risking the entire lineage for a common girl and two undocumented liabilities.”