She had broken a sixth, quietly, off to the side: the lawyer who did her dirtiest work and never forgave himself, and who had just, with something like gratitude, handed me the rope to hang her scheme with.
The line went dead.
Chapter 21 — Get Out
Viveca sank down onto the entryway bench, and put her face in her hands, and the grand matriarch of the Ravensworth family became, in the space of a breath, a small and frightened old woman who had finally run out of road.
“Get out of my home, Mother,” I said.
Quietly.
There was no shouting left in me.
She looked up, mascara ruined, seventy years of certainty gone from her face.
“Auden — please.
What about the announcement.
What about Saskia, the Wexleys, the merger, everything we—”
“There is no announcement,” I said.
“There’s no merger, and there’s no engagement, and after tonight there is very little left of the arrangement you spent my whole life building.
Tomorrow morning I’m calling an emergency board meeting.