At my birthday party, my husband tied me to a ceiling beam and wh*pped me thirty times because I had stained his mistress’s dress. “Maybe now you’ll learn your place,” he laughed while everyone watched. I didn’t cry. When they finally cut me down, I picked up my phone and called my five brothers. “Make his entire family beg for mercy,” I whispered. Then the front gates suddenly slammed shut.
“That’s insane,” Isaac said.
“That’s completely insane.”
“The CFO’s signed statement is page four,” Marcus said.
“The wire transfer records are pages seven through nineteen.
The shell company registrations are pages twenty through thirty-one.
Would you like me to keep going?”
Isaac looked at his father.
“Dad.”
Arthur Vance finally sat down.
Not gracefully.
He lowered himself into the chair the way a man does when his legs stop working properly.
His champagne glass was still full.
He didn’t touch it.
Wendy crossed the room and put her hand on Arthur’s shoulder.
“Don’t say anything,” she said quietly.
“Not one word.”
Julian stepped forward.
“That’s good advice, Wendy.
He shouldn’t.”
“And you,” Wendy said, turning on Julian with sudden fury, “have no right to walk into this house and—”
“Your daughter-in-law’s wrists are marked,” Julian said.
“She was tied to a beam in her own home and str*ck thirty times in front of witnesses.
Every person in this room is a witness.
So before you finish that sentence, I want you to think very carefully about whether you want to be part of what comes next.”
Wendy’s mouth closed.
Clover had not moved from her position near the champagne tower.
She stood very still, her glass held at her side, watching the room reorganize itself around her.
She was calculating something.
I could see it in the way her eyes moved — from Arthur, to Marcus’s phone, to Isaac, to me.
“Flora,” she said finally.
