My husband let his mistress hold my eight-week-old daughter in my nursery while she wore the ivory silk dress I had bought for my own newborn portraits. Two minutes after the photographer sent me the gallery, I knew my marriage was over, but Landon still had no idea those files had reached me. And the photographs were not even the worst thing hiding inside that gallery.

“Julian?” The room tilted around me. “Julian was flying back from London for June’s baptism! He hasn't even been in the country!”

“Landon knows how to manufacture jurisdiction,” Maeve said, already pulling up a docket on her tablet. “He filed a police report claiming the safe was breached three days ago. He provided forged security footage showing a man matching Julian’s height leaving your back gate carrying a lockbox. Landon knew you had the upper hand with the custody evidence, so he found a hostage.”

Julian was my younger brother. He was twenty-three, an architect, gentle and completely naive about the cutthroat legal games Landon played. If Landon tagged him with a federal grand larceny charge, it would ruin his life before his career even started.

“He’s using Julian to force me to drop the custody filings,” I said, pacing the room.

“Of course he is,” Maeve said. “He wants a settlement. He wants you to trade your brother’s freedom for June’s sole custody and your father’s trust.”

“We’re not negotiating with him.”

“We don't negotiate with criminals, Greer. We flank them.” Maeve picked up her phone and dialed a direct extension. “Get me Marcus Kane at the Department of Financial Regulation. Tell him I have the Crestview audit files he’s been hunting for.”

Within an hour, Maeve’s conference room had transformed into a war room. Two junior associates arrived carrying forensic accounting workbooks, cross-referencing Landon’s offshore accounts with Harper’s shell corporations.

At 2:00 AM, my phone buzzed. It was an unknown number.

I answered and put it on speaker.

“Greer,” Landon’s voice came through, sounding completely composed, almost cheerful. “I assume Maeve has briefed you on your brother’s unfortunate legal situation?”

“You planted that footage, Landon.”

“Can you prove it?” he asked smoothly. “The CPD property crimes division seems very interested in the bearer bonds Julian had in his carry-on bag. Strange how those bonds managed to match the serial numbers of the ones missing from my study.”

He had slipped the bonds into Julian’s luggage through an airport courier service. He had set this up days in advance, a fallback plan in case his psychiatric ambush failed.

“What do you want, Landon?”

“Tomorrow morning at eight-thirty. You will meet me at my lawyer’s office downtown. You will sign a joint custody agreement with Harper named as alternate guardian. You will release full administrative rights of the Vance-Maddox foundation to my mother. And you will agree to a confidential mutual dismissal of all marital claims.”

“And if I don't?”

“Then Julian gets arraigned at Cook County Jail at noon. Bail will be set at five million cash. He will spend the next year in a cell awaiting trial for grand larceny, and your father’s legacy will be dragged through the mud until there’s nothing left of your family’s name.”

“You’re sick,” I said.

“I’m practical, Greer. You have six hours. See you at eight-thirty.”

He hung up.

I turned to Maeve. “Can we clear Julian before noon?”

Maeve stared at the timeline on the whiteboard, her expression grim. “The CPD takes forty-eight hours to process security metadata from the airport. If Landon’s friends at the state’s attorney’s office push the indictment through early, Julian will be processed into Cook County by lunch.”

“Then we don't clear Julian through the police,” I said, looking down at the flash drive containing Tessa’s photoshoot archive. “We break Landon’s leverage from the inside.”

“How?”

“Harper Quinn,” I said. “Harper isn't a psychopath like Landon. She’s ambitious, selfish, and terrified of going to prison. She thinks Landon loves her. She thinks they’re going to run off into the sunset with my life.”