And I realized, listening to Percival lie to me so effortlessly over the phone, that the same system was being prepared for me — that somewhere, already, the Pembrooks were laying the groundwork of my story too, the story they would tell if I ever became inconvenient.

I was not yet their prisoner.

But they were already, quietly, building the second cage, the one made of words.

I decided, hanging up the phone, that I would burn it down before they finished it.

The instant I hung up, I called Fitzroy Wexler — a senior corporate attorney, one of the very few people in the industry I trusted without reservation.

I asked him to run a confidential, deep forensic audit: Pembrook Holdings, Percival, his father Dunstan, and Yvaine’s family background.