Vivian raised the strap a second time.

But Vincent—” Marco lowered his voice.

“Even with a confirmed forgery, the legal process will take time.

Months, possibly longer.

Vivian’s father’s firm will fight it.

They have resources.”

“So do I.”

“Yes.

But Clara Reyes doesn’t.

And if this goes to a prolonged legal battle, she’s the one who has to survive it.”

Vincent looked at the documents.

Then he picked up the amendment, walked back to the sitting room, and placed it on the table in front of Vivian.

She looked at it without touching it.

“My mother’s signature,” he said, “leans left.

Always.

Every letter she wrote me.

Every document she signed in my presence.

Every card she sent at Christmas.” He pointed to the amendment.

“This one doesn’t.”

Vivian said nothing.

“Your father’s firm filed this.”

“My father’s firm notarized a document that was brought to them by—”

“By whom, Vivian?

Who brought it to them?”

Her hands stayed folded on the table.

“This is going to a forensic examiner,” Vincent said.

“Within forty-eight hours.

Whatever story you’re preparing, it needs to account for that.”

Something changed in Vivian’s face then.

Not collapse — she was too controlled for collapse.

But the calculation shifted.

He could see it happening, the way he had seen it happen in boardrooms when someone realized the position they thought was safe had been quietly surrounded.

“I want to speak to my father,” she said.

“You can speak to whoever you like.

After you answer one question.”

She waited.

“Did you know about the codicil before my mother d*ed?”

A long pause.

“Yes,” she said.

“How long before?”

“She told my father about it.

She called him herself.

She wanted the firm to handle the paperwork.” Vivian’s voice was flat now, stripped of performance.

“My father advised her against it.

He told her it would complicate the estate.

She disagreed.

She was going to file it regardless.”

“So your father filed the amendment after she d*ed.”

“He protected the estate.”

“He stole from a dead woman’s granddaughter.”

“He protected what your family built from being handed to strangers based on a sentimental attachment your mother developed while she was dying.”

Clara, who had been silent through all of it, said quietly: “She wasn’t developing a sentimental attachment.

She was trying to correct something.

Something that had been wrong for a long time.”

Vivian looked at her.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“My grandmother left Italy with nothing,” Clara said.

“She left because your family — the Moretti family — promised her a share of the property she had helped build and then told her there was nothing left when she came to collect.

My mother told me that much, at least.

She said her mother never recovered from it.

That she spent the rest of her life believing she had been foolish to trust people who thought she didn’t matter.”

The room was very quiet.

“Lucia found out,” Clara continued.

“Didn’t she.

She found out what had happened to Rosa and she spent the last years of her life trying to make it right.”

Vincent looked at his phone.

At the photo of the two women in the garden, standing together, both of them smiling.

“Yes,” he said.

“I think she did.”

Vivian pushed her chair back and stood.

“I’m calling my father.”

“Do that,” Vincent said.

“Tell him Marco has copies of both documents.

Tell him a forensic examiner has already been contacted.

And tell him that by tomorrow morning, I will be speaking to my own legal team about what comes next.”

She walked to the door.

Stopped.

“Vincent.” Her voice was quiet.

“Everything I did — everything my father did — was to protect what you were going to inherit.

What we were going to build together.

I thought that was what you wanted.”

“You thought wrong,” he said.

She left.

The door didn’t sl@m.

That was almost worse.

The guests had gone by midnight.

The ballroom staff cleared the tables in near-silence, moving around the untouched champagne tower and the flower arrangements that had cost more than Clara made in a month.

Nobody asked where the hosts were.

Nobody seemed to want to know.

Vincent had arranged a car for Clara.

She had refused it twice before accepting on the condition that it take her home and nothing else.

“I don’t need anything from you,” she had said, standing in the corridor with her jacket over her uniform and her locket back beneath her collar.

“I know,” he said.

“The car is not about need.

It’s about the fact that it’s nearly midnight and you were hjt twice with a leather strap at my party and the least I can do is make sure you get home safely.”

She had looked at him for a moment.

Then she got in the car.

He called her the next morning at nine.

She picked up on the fourth ring.

“I want to meet with you and my attorney,” he said.

“Today if possible.

There are things you need to understand about what was taken from your family, and I’d rather you hear them from someone who can explain the legal situation clearly.”

“Mr.

Moretti—”

“Vincent.”

A pause.

“Vincent.

I’m a twenty-three-year-old server.

I don’t have money for attorneys.”

“My attorney will be representing the estate’s interests in correcting a fraudulent amendment.

You don’t need your own attorney for this meeting.

You just need to be there.”

Another pause, longer.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

He thought about his mother’s handwriting.

The leftward slant of every letter she had ever written him.

The way she had spoken about loyalty and debt and the people who had made the family what it was, back when he was young enough to think those were just stories.

“Because my mother wanted it done,” he said.

“And she ran out of time.”

Clara was quiet for a moment.

“Alright,” she said.

“What time?”