His voice did not shake.

His face did not betray a single thing.

Because in the seconds after Lily’s last whisper, some cold and strategic part of Marcus, a part he had not known he possessed, had taken command, and it understood one thing with total clarity: that Sarah could not know he knew.

That if she suspected, for even a moment, that Lily had told him, she would move, would destroy evidence, would spin a story, would perhaps take Lily somewhere.

His only advantage, his one and only advantage, was Sarah’s belief that her scheme was still perfectly hidden.