CHAPTER 23

Sophia's POV

The earpiece crackled once. Soft enough that I almost missed it.

Then Damien's voice, low and urgent. "Sophia. Don't react. Mrs. Park isn't just working for Diana. She's been taking money from the Vale fraud account for fifteen years. She's not loyal to anyone in that room."

I kept my face exactly where it was.

Diana was mid sentence, explaining the structure of the offshore accounts connected to Victoria's grandfather, and I made myself nod at the right places while every instinct in my body recalibrated around the woman standing quietly by the door with her hands folded in front of her like she was waiting to clear plates.

She had served me breakfast that morning.

I had thanked her.

"You're not listening," Diana said, catching the shift in my attention.

"I am," I said. "I'm just thinking about how many people in this story have been pretending to be something they're not."

Diana's eyes moved past me to Mrs. Park.

A small flicker. Almost nothing. But I caught it because I had spent three years learning to read small flickers in rooms full of people performing things they didn't feel.

Diana suspected something too.

"Margaret," Diana said. Her voice was casual. "Would you make tea."

"Of course," Mrs. Park said.

She turned toward the kitchen.

I needed to keep this moving. I needed her out of earshot, or I needed to know exactly what I was dealing with before she came back into this room with whatever she actually intended to do.

"Actually," I said. "I'd rather she stayed."

Mrs. Park stopped.

Diana looked at me carefully.

"Why," she said.

"Because I think Margaret has been very useful to a lot of people in this story," I said, keeping my voice even. "And I think it's time we found out exactly who she's been most useful to."

Mrs. Park turned around slowly.

The calm efficient expression was still there. But underneath it something had shifted, recalculated, the way a person's face changes when a script they have used for years suddenly stops working.

"I don't know what you mean," she said.

"Fifteen years of payments from a Vale fraud account," I said. "That's a very specific number for someone who doesn't know what I mean."

The room went completely still.

Richard looked between us, confused. Diana's expression had gone hard and focused, the strategist returning fully now that a new variable had entered her calculations.

"Margaret," Diana said slowly. "Is that true."

Mrs. Park didn't answer immediately.

Then she smiled. Small and tired and very different from the kitchen smile she wore at the estate.

"You should know better than anyone," she said to Diana, "that loyalty is expensive and nobody ever pays for it twice."

"You were mine," Diana said. Her voice had an edge to it I hadn't heard yet. Something almost personal.

"I was whoever paid me," Mrs. Park said simply. "You hired me eleven years ago to watch the Vale household. Victoria's family hired me four years later to watch you watching them. And the Black estate hired me nine years ago to run their house, which gave me access to everyone." She looked between us. "I have been very good at my job."

I felt my stomach drop.

"You've been feeding information to all three sides," I said. "This whole time."

"Information is the only thing in this world that doesn't run out," Mrs. Park said. "I simply make sure I always have some left to sell."

"What do you have right now," Diana said. Quiet and dangerous.

Mrs. Park looked at her.

"I have the location of every member of the Black family at this exact moment," she said. "I have the contents of the laptop Sophia's mother left, because I copied it the moment it entered the estate tonight." She paused. "And I have a very generous offer from Marcus Vale to deliver all of it to him within the hour."

The room went silent.

My earpiece crackled. Damien's voice, tight and controlled. "Sophia get out. Now."

"You copied the laptop," I said slowly. "Tonight. Which means you had access to it the moment I brought it into the estate."

"Yes," Mrs. Park said.

"Which means everyone in that main room. Dominic, Zane, Elijah, Remy, Carter." I felt the floor shift under everything I had assumed was safe. "You heard all of it. The plan to come here. Everything."

"Yes," she said simply.

Diana stood up slowly from her chair.

"You sold out my plan to Marcus," she said. "After everything I—"

"After everything you used me for eleven years without ever once asking if I wanted to be used," Mrs. Park said. The calm had cracked now, something colder underneath it surfacing. "You don't get loyalty from people you treat as furniture, Diana. You should have learned that from your own sons."

Diana flinched. Genuinely flinched, the first uncalculated reaction I had seen from her all night.

I took a step back toward the door.

"Sophia," Mrs. Park said. Her voice was almost gentle now, which was somehow worse than if it had been threatening. "I'd stay if I were you. Marcus's people are already on their way here. He wants the laptop and he wants you, and I imagine he's not going to be particularly gentle about either."

My blood went cold.

"How long," I said.

"They left the moment I confirmed your location," she said. "Which was about eleven minutes ago." She looked at her watch with the same calm precision she used for everything. "I'd say four minutes. Maybe five."

I turned and ran for the door.

It opened before I reached it.

Damien stood in the frame, and behind him three black SUVs were already pulling up to the curb with their headlights cutting through the dark street, doors opening before the engines had fully stopped, and the unmistakable shape of Marcus stepping out of the lead car with an expression I had only seen on him once before.

The night he threw me out into the rain.

"Sophia," he called across the street. His voice carried the particular confidence of a man who believed he had finally won something. "Bring me the laptop. And we can all go home."