Through the gap, we could see the city’s upper echelon—Daniel’s crucial investors, his oldest clients, his golfing buddies, his financial backers.

They weren’t looking at us.

They were all staring down at their glowing phone screens, their faces lit in pale blue light, reading the exact same catastrophic files he had spent two years meticulously hiding from me.

I watched the exact moment Daniel’s carefully constructed masquerade fractured into a million unrecoverable pieces.

His shoulders slumped, and the arrogant posture he’d carried for a decade evaporated.

“You…” Daniel stammered, his eyes wide and hollow as he turned back to me. “Claire… you have no idea what you’ve just done. You’ve destroyed everything.”