I looked at her hand. I closed my fingers around her wrist — not squeezing, just moving it off my chest — and with my other hand slid the diamond off her finger.

I dropped it into my pocket.

“We already have,” I said.

Epilogue — The Magnolia Tree

The scandal ran the news cycle for weeks.

Vanessa’s family name was gone inside seven days, and the socialites who’d laughed at me in that ballroom were the first to disown her publicly. Daniel lost his position, his mortgaged house, and every friend he’d bought with proximity to my name.

Pierce folded immediately, signing a full confession to avoid the maximum sentence and taking three more corrupt board members down with him. Vanessa’s mother quietly sold her mansion to cover the retainers keeping her daughter out of a federal prison.