I faced the guests.
“I apologize to Sophie and Daniel. I didn’t intend to discuss any of this tonight.”
“Then don’t,” Vanessa snapped.
I looked at her.
“You made tonight public.”
I clicked again.
A spreadsheet appeared.
Twenty-seven payments.
Three years.
Total:
$4,863,400.
Someone whispered, “Jesus.”
Vanessa laughed.
It sounded forced.
“Do you imagine large charitable organizations operate on pocket change?”
“No.”
I clicked again.
The screen displayed the incorporation record for Vesper Hospitality Solutions.
The listed director was Eleanor Vale.
I heard Daniel make a strange sound.
Not shock.
Recognition.
I turned.
He had gone white.
Sophie touched his arm.
“Daniel?”
He stared at the screen.
“Eleanor was my mother’s name.”
Silence.
Vanessa closed her eyes.
Only for a second.
But it was enough.
Daniel looked at her.
“My mother has been dead for nineteen years.”
Vanessa lifted her chin.
“Names repeat.”
The next page appeared.
Date of birth.
Former address.
Social security verification record.
Daniel walked toward the screen as if pulled by something invisible.
“No.”
Sophie followed.
“Daniel…”
“That’s her.”
He looked at Vanessa.
“That is my mother’s information.”
Vanessa finally lost her composure.
“This proves nothing.”
“It proves someone registered a company using the identity of a dead woman,” I said.
“And you know it was me?”
I clicked.
Security footage filled the screen.
Vanessa entering the executive suite.
Then Lewis Kane.
Then Vanessa again, months earlier, meeting Kane inside the Aurelia garage.
The room erupted into whispers.
Kane himself was not present.
Adrian stepped forward.
“He was detained upstairs by hotel security after attempting to leave with several company laptops.”
Vanessa stared at him.
“You detained an employee?”
“We prevented the removal of hotel property.”
“You have no authority—”
“Enough,” Dad said.
His voice thundered through the ballroom.
Vanessa turned.
And suddenly she smiled again.
Not the mocking smile from before.
A different one.
Cold.
Almost relieved.
“You’re right, Edward.”
Dad’s face changed.
She looked at me.
“Enough.”
Then she reached into her evening bag.
For one second Adrian moved toward her.
She laughed.
“Relax.”
Vanessa withdrew a folded document.
She handed it to me.
“Since Claire wants transparency, perhaps she should have it.”
I opened the paper.
The first thing I recognized was my father’s signature.
The second was the authorization code beneath it.
My stomach dropped.
It was an approval for one of Vesper’s largest transfers.
$612,000.
Signed by Edward Whitmore.
I looked at Dad.
He was staring at the document.
“Dad?”
Vanessa’s voice became soft.
“Show the next page, Claire.”
I did.
Another authorization.
Dad’s signature.
Another.
And another.
Across the ballroom, I heard chairs shift.
Whispers grew louder.
My father suddenly seemed older beneath the chandeliers.
Vanessa turned toward the crowd.
“You see how quickly righteous people become selective about evidence?”
“Shut up,” Sophie said.
Vanessa ignored her.
She looked at me.
“Your father approved those payments.”
I searched Dad’s face.
“Tell me she’s lying.”
He said nothing.
That frightened me more than anything Vanessa had done all night.
“Dad?”
“I approved payments to multiple vendors.”
“Vesper?”
“I don’t remember every authorization.”
Vanessa smiled.
“Convenient.”
“Were you involved?”
“Claire—”
“Were you involved?”
My voice broke on the last word.
The ballroom dissolved around me.
There was only my father.
The man who had taught me never to sign a document I had not read.
The man who once returned twenty dollars to a grocery cashier because she had accidentally given him too much change.
