We held it in the very three-million-dollar downtown condo they had tried to extort from my daughter.

The property had been stripped bare—vast, echoing, a pristine cage overlooking the city.

Dominic and I stood by the windows, backlit by the sun, casting long shadows across the floor. Beatrice’s aristocratic makeup was already cracking. Preston’s tan had gone gray.

“Please,” Beatrice began, her voice a pathetic, reedy thing. “Victoria, you have to listen. We were desperate. The lenders were going to ruin us. We’ll leave the country, I swear it.

You’ll never see us again.” I stepped forward, my heels clicking sharply against the wood, a rhythmic sound that echoed like gunshots in the empty room.

I looked down at her with cold, absolute disgust. “You slapped my daughter forty times, Beatrice,” I said, my voice eerily calm, washing over her like freezing water.

“You calculated her pain. You held her down, you watched her bleed, and you banked on her silence. You underestimated her. And you severely underestimated me.”