Maya opened the boardroom door just enough for him to hear her. “Because I wanted to see who you were when you thought I had nothing.”

The sentence landed in the hallway and stayed there.

Linda stepped forward, red-faced. “You humiliated this family.”

Maya looked at her. “No, Linda. I documented how this family behaves when it thinks no one important is watching.”

Helen stood behind Maya with her tablet. The legal director arrived from the executive office carrying the Mercer booking file — a quiet man in a charcoal suit who’d handled enough entitled guests to know the loudest person in a room was rarely the most dangerous one.

“Ms. Arden,” he said, “we found something in the Mercer family’s booking file.”