I answered, and his voice was soft, almost tender. “Tell Chloe midnight still stands. She signs over the penthouse, or tomorrow morning the whole city learns what her father buried to buy it.

And after that, we come for the marriage.”

The line went dead.

Then Evelyn’s phone buzzed. She read it and went very still. “The man from the warehouse. The one presumed dead.”

“Presumed?” Robert whispered.

Evelyn turned the screen toward us: a grainy photo of an older man entering a church shelter in a neighboring town three days earlier. Burn scars marked one side of his face.