I had imagined this moment many times over the previous twenty-four hours.

I had expected satisfaction.

Triumph.

Maybe relief.

Instead, I felt empty.

Cain whispered, “You said it was mine.”

Sophia cried harder.

“I thought it might be.”

Marcus stood slowly.

Cain lunged again.

Security stopped him.

“You knew?”

Cain screamed at Marcus.

Marcus didn’t answer quickly enough.

That was answer enough.

“You knew!”

“Cain, you were already planning to leave Rita.”

“For her!”

Marcus laughed bitterly.

“No.

For yourself.”

Cain stared at his best friend.

Marcus straightened his jacket.

“You didn’t leave Rita because you loved Sophia.

You left Rita because Sophia made you feel young.”

Cain recoiled as if struck.

Marcus continued.

“You wanted a son.

You wanted magazine covers.

You wanted some new version of yourself where nobody remembered Rita was the reason you survived the first ten years.”

“Shut up.”

“It was always about you.”

“Shut up!”

Marcus looked toward me.

Then back at Cain.

“And you were so busy proving you were smarter than your wife that you never noticed everybody around you had started lying.”

For one dangerous second, Cain looked capable of murder.

Then Daniel stepped forward.

“There is still more.”

Even I looked at him.

Because Daniel and I had agreed that the financial investigation would wait until morning.

He opened his leather portfolio.

“Mr.

Williams,” he said, “would you like to tell Cain, or shall I?”

Marcus’s face drained.

Cain noticed.

“What?”

Marcus remained silent.

“What did you do?”

Daniel removed several pages.

“The transfer documents prepared to strip Rita of her voting interest contained a second set of transfer instructions.”

I frowned.

That was new.

Daniel had not told me.

“Daniel?”

He looked at me apologetically.

“I received the forensic accounting update twenty minutes ago.”

He turned a page.

“Had Rita signed those documents, her shares would indeed have been converted.”

Cain nodded sharply.

“Exactly.”

Daniel continued.

“But forty-eight hours later, Cain’s shares would also have been pledged as collateral to repay a private bridge facility.”

Cain stopped.

“What bridge facility?”

Marcus stared at the floor.

Daniel answered.

“Two hundred and ten million dollars.”

I felt the first real chill of the evening.

Cain looked at Marcus.

“What is he talking about?”

Marcus said nothing.

Daniel looked toward the ballroom.

“Santana Urban Holdings has been hiding a liquidity crisis for approximately nine months.”

The investors erupted.

Cain’s head whipped toward Marcus.

“That’s impossible.”

Daniel handed him a page.

Cain snatched it.

His eyes moved across the numbers.

“No.”

Marcus rubbed his mouth.

Cain looked up.

“You told me the Singapore financing closed.”

“It didn’t.”

“You said Kestral funded the hotel acquisition.”

“They withdrew.”

Cain’s face became waxy.

“How much?”

Marcus said nothing.

Cain moved toward him.

“How much?”

“Four hundred and eighty-three million.”

Even I lost my composure.

“What?”

Marcus looked at me.

“The debt isn’t all due immediately.”

I laughed once.

Not because anything was funny.

Because after everything I had discovered, there was apparently still another basement beneath the basement.

Cain shoved the papers into Marcus’s chest.

“You hid half a billion dollars from me?”

“You signed every deal.”

“Because you told me liquidity was covered!”

Marcus snapped.

“And why do you think I had to cover it?”

The ballroom went silent again.

Marcus looked around at the crowd, then at Cain.

“Private jets.

Vanity towers.

Hotels nobody wanted.

The yacht partnership.

The Miami land purchase you forced through after every analyst said no.”

“That was strategic.”

“That was ego.”

Cain stared at him.

Marcus pointed toward me.

“Rita kept telling you to slow down.”

My heart began pounding.

I remembered.

Of course I remembered.

Three years earlier, I had warned Cain that the company was growing too quickly.

Two years earlier, I had begged him not to purchase the Miami parcel.