“Three weeks ago. The night of the mayor’s fundraiser. I went downstairs for extra champagne. She was there with Victor Valez. He was asking about delivery routes at the docks. She gave him an envelope.”
Senator Hale laughed softly.
“This is absurd.”
Ronan did not look at him.
“Matteo.”
“I’ll pull the cameras,” Matteo said.
Vivienne’s voice sharpened.
“You won’t find anything.”
That was the wrong thing to say.
Ronan turned slowly.
“Why not?”
Vivienne’s lips parted.
Matteo’s phone buzzed. He checked it, then looked at Ronan.
“The wine cellar cameras went down that night from 9:14 to 9:46.”
Ivy’s stomach sank.
Vivienne smiled again.
“There. No proof.”
“No,” Ronan said. “That is proof someone did not want proof.”
Senator Hale’s expression hardened.
“Careful.”
Ronan faced him fully.
“Did you just threaten me in my own house?”
“I am reminding you that accusations have consequences.”
“So does assault.”
Vivienne laughed.
“You think anyone will press charges? Against me? Over her?”
Ivy flinched before she could stop herself.
Ronan saw that too.
He stepped closer to Vivienne.
“I will.”
Vivienne blinked.
“You?”
“This is my home. My employee. My witnesses. My cameras.”
“Former employee,” Ivy said quietly.
Ronan glanced back at her.
“You are right.”
Then to Vivienne.
“My former employee.”
For reasons Ivy did not understand, the correction mattered.
Vivienne’s control cracked.
“You are humiliating me for a woman who scrubbed your floors.”
“No. You humiliated yourself by believing the floor made her lower than you.”
Lena’s tears started again.
Matteo murmured into his phone, sending orders Ivy could not hear.
Ronan gathered the papers from the folder and handed them to Matteo.
“Copy everything. Verify everything. Find Victor Valez.”
Ivy stepped forward.
“No.”
Ronan looked at her.
“If he is involved—”
“You do not understand. If he knows where I work, then he knows where my brothers are.”
Matteo’s expression shifted.
“How old?”
“Fourteen and sixteen.”
Ronan’s face darkened.
“Where are they?”
Ivy hesitated.
Trust was a luxury she could not afford.
Vivienne seized the pause.
“See? She lies even now.”
Ivy looked at the woman who had whipped her in front of two hundred people and felt something inside her finally burn hotter than fear.
“I lie to survive people like you.”
Vivienne’s nostrils flared.
Before anyone could move, she slapped Ivy across the face.
The sound cracked through the hallway.
Lena screamed.
Ronan caught Vivienne’s wrist so fast the senator shouted.
Vivienne gasped in pain.
Ronan did not twist. He did not strike. He simply held her still, and somehow that was worse.
“You are done touching her,” he said.
Vivienne tried to pull free.
“You’re hurting me.”
“No. I’m stopping you.”
Senator Hale stepped forward.
“Release my daughter.”
Ronan did.
Vivienne stumbled back into her father.
Ronan looked at Matteo.
“Escort Miss Hale and the senator out.”
Vivienne went pale.
“You cannot throw me out.”
“I already ended the engagement. Do not make me end your father’s career tonight too.”
Senator Hale smiled without warmth.
“You do not have that power.”
Ronan leaned in slightly.
“Ask your friends why they left so quickly.”
The senator said nothing.
For the first time, Ivy understood.
The guests had not fled because the party was over.
They had fled because they knew war had begun.
Vivienne gathered her pride like a torn cloak.
“You want a war over a maid?” she whispered.
Ronan’s eyes moved to Ivy again.
He seemed to choose his words carefully.
“No,” he said. “You started a war against a woman who kept saving people while everyone else watched.”
Vivienne’s face twisted.
“This is not over.”
Ronan’s voice was calm.
“It never is with people like you.”
As Matteo’s men escorted the Hales down the corridor, Vivienne looked back at Ivy.
The hatred in her eyes was naked now.
“You should have let the soup hit the child,” she said softly. “It would have hurt less.”
Ivy did not answer.
Because her phone had started ringing.
The screen showed her brother’s name.
Noah.
She answered with a shaking hand.
“Noah?”
At first, there was only static.
Then her sixteen-year-old brother whispered:
“Ivy, don’t come home.”
Her blood turned cold.
“What happened?”
A crash sounded in the background.
Then a man’s voice laughed.
A voice Ivy had not heard in two years.
Victor Valez.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said through the phone. “Miss me?”
Ivy forgot Ronan was standing there.
She forgot the guards, the storm, the blood drying beneath her bandage. She forgot Vivienne, the ballroom, the video spreading online, all of it.
There was only that voice.
Victor Valez had always sounded cheerful when he was about to ruin something.
“Put Noah on the phone,” Ivy said.
Her own voice was steady.
