It’s under the homestead exemption!”
“The Greenwich house was remortgaged in April, you stupid bitch!”
Richard screamed, turning on her with bared teeth, his eyes wild and bloodshot under the sickly yellow glare.
“I pledged the deed to an offshore investment fund to finance the bridge bid!
And guess who owned forty-nine percent of that fund?
Vantage!
She’s had the deed in her safe since before Liam even took her to that goddamn country club!”
Liam sat on the edge of the concrete pier, his legs dangling over the dark, surging water, staring down into the black foam where the garbage from the fishing fleet bobbed against the pilings.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
A single text message from an unlisted number.
He pulled the device out with numb, clumsy fingers.
The screen was cracked across the center, but the text was unmistakable:
*The master stateroom is unlocked, Liam.
The safe is open.
If you want the original assignment certificates for the Narragansett Consortium shares—the ones your father stole from Julian Sterling—they are in the mahogany lockbox on the vanity.
Bring them to the old roastery on 4th Street by midnight, or Arthur Sterling files the homicide referral with the Massachusetts State Police.*
Liam’s breath caught in his throat.
*Homicide.*
He looked up at his mother.
She was still screaming at his father, her manicured fingers clawing at the air, her face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated venom, blaming everyone on earth for the ruin that her own unchecked arrogance had engineered.
“Mom,” Liam said, his voice quiet, trembling.
Victoria didn’t hear him.
She was lunging at Richard, trying to snatch the burner phone from his hand.
“Give it to me!
Let me call Senator Hastings!
He owes us!
We funded his entire reelection campaign—”
“Hastings was on the upper deck tonight, Victoria!”
Richard yelled, shoving her back onto the crate with enough force that her head snapped back.
“He was the first one onto the Coast Guard cutter!
He wouldn’t pick up my call if I was burning alive on his front lawn!”
“Mom,” Liam said again, standing up from the concrete.
His loafers were gone; he was standing in his soaked argyle socks on the gravel, the wind whipping his thin polo shirt against his ribs.
“Did you know Clara Sterling?”
Victoria stopped.
The silence that fell over the bait dock was sudden, violent, as if someone had sliced through the humid night air with an axe.
Richard froze, the burner phone hovering an inch from his ear, his eyes shifting slowly toward his son with an expression of cold, sickening guilt.
“What did you say?”
Victoria whispered, her voice dropping into a register of terrifying stillness.
“Clara Sterling,” Liam repeated, his voice shaking so hard he could barely pronounce the consonants.
“The woman who died in the river in 2001.
Chloe’s mother.
The one you told me was an unstable drunk who walked out on Julian when Chloe was a baby.”
Victoria stared at him.
The madness in her eyes didn’t vanish; it curdled, hardening into a defensive, snarl-like rigidity.
“She was an obstacle,” Victoria hissed, her voice barely louder than the hum of the sodium light.
“She was a stubborn, self-righteous little academic who thought she had the right to destroy our family’s future because of some pathetic moral qualm about shipping contracts.
