Chapter 7 7

The rose was perfect. Deep red, fully bloomed, the petals still taut with life.

Evia sat on the garden bench, her phone in her lap, watching the gardener work three beds away. The afternoon was cold, gray, promising snow that never seemed to arrive. She wore gloves, cashmere, unnecessary for the temperature but useful for what came next.

The phone vibrated. Penelope's number.

She answered. Put in the earpiece. Activated recording.

"Three days." Penelope's voice, stripped of pretense now, raw with need. "You said you'd consider my proposal."

"I have considered it." Evia kept her voice low, hesitant, the voice of a woman cornered. "Penelope, the amount you're asking-it's impossible. The prenuptial agreement, the trust structures, I can't simply-"

"You can." The word was a slap. "You're a McLaughlin. You have access. You have-"

"I have nothing." Evia let her voice break, just slightly, just enough. "Frederic controls everything. The accounts, the properties, the-" She stopped. Breathed. "If I divorce him without cause, I leave with nothing. You know that. Everyone knows that."

"Then find cause." Penelope's laugh was harsh. "You have cause. You have photos, videos, whatever you were doing on that terrace-"

"That would destroy him." Evia made her voice smaller. "The scandal. The stock price. His grandmother would-"

"I don't care about his grandmother." Penelope's voice rose, carrying, the gardener glanced over and Evia turned away, hunching her shoulders, playing the part of a woman having a painful private conversation. "I care about what's mine. What's coming to me. I have his child. His heir. That means something."

"It means everything." Evia agreed. Too quickly. She forced herself to pause, to breathe, to sound reluctant. "But Penelope, even if I agreed-even if I gave you what you're asking, half the settlement, eight figures-how would that work? Legally? The foundation, the trustees, they would investigate. They would find the transfer. They would-"

"That's your problem." The words came out triumphant, greedy, exactly what Evia had been fishing for. "Your problem to solve. I want the money in an offshore account. Cayman Islands. Same place he sends his dirty little secrets." A laugh. "I know things too, you know. About the merger. About the bribes in Singapore. I could talk. I will talk, if you don't-"

"You're threatening me?" Evia made her voice rise, shocked, wounded. "After everything I've-"

"I'm threatening both of you." Penelope's voice dropped, intimate, poisonous. "Three days, Evia. Or I call Page Six. I call the Times. I tell them how the McLaughlin Foundation's ice queen persecuted a pregnant scholarship student. How she threatened my life. My baby's life." She paused. "How would that play on the merger announcement?"

Evia closed her eyes. Counted to three. Let her silence speak of defeat, of capitulation, of a woman broken.

"I need time," she whispered. "To arrange the transfer. To access the accounts without-"

"Three days." The line went dead.

Evia sat still. The gardener had moved to the far beds, out of earshot. She removed the earpiece. Saved the file. Uploaded it to her Cayman server, her Zurich backup, her physical drive in the safe deposit box.

Then she dialed.

"Sterling." The voice was gravel and whiskey, a woman's voice, sixty years of dismantling men like Frederic McLaughlin in divorce courts. "I have something for you."

She sent the file. Waited. Listened to the silence on the line, the faint sound of fingers on keyboard, the professional assessment of a predator recognizing prey.

"Extortion." Sterling's voice held satisfaction. "Federal statute. Mandatory minimum. With the amount she's demanding?" A laugh, dry as dust. "She'll be forty before she sees daylight."

"I want him too." Evia's voice was flat now, stripped of performance. "Frederic. The transfers. The lies. Everything."

"Oh, we'll get him." Sterling's keyboard clicked. "The question is how much. How hard. How public."

"Maximum." Evia stood. Walked to the rose bed. "All of it."

She ended the call. Looked at the perfect bloom before her. The gardener had missed this one, left it for last, perhaps planning to cut it for the house.

Evia reached out. Her gloved fingers closed on the stem, found the thorn, ignored the prick of pain. She pulled. The stem snapped, a clean break, and she held the flower for a moment, feeling its weight, its brief, false beauty.

Then she dropped it in the trash can beside the bench and walked back to the house.