And the real danger of it — the thing she was finally, tonight, prepared to stop doing — was that she had let the small, insulted woman upstairs slowly convince her she was the real one, that the smallness was the truth and the power only a costume.

It had taken a kiss beside a limousine to remind her which of those two women had actually built everything the Beckworths mistook for their own.

Isadora crossed to a locked desk, opened it, and lifted out a dark green phone that connected to exactly one place.

She called Ambrose Rutledge, the company’s chief legal officer, and he answered before the first ring finished.

“Ms.

Danforth.”