I caught my husband kissing my older sister in my mother’s kitchen while twenty people celebrated my father’s sixty-fifth birthday in the next room. / Chapter 45 / 120

Chapter 45 - A Dance with the Devil

The sound of shattering glass turned heads throughout the ballroom, but Richard stood petrified, his arrogant smile melting into a grotesque mask of shock.

I didn't break my stride. I walked straight toward him, the train of my blue gown whispering against the floorboards, Liam flanking me like an impenetrable shadow.

"Maya..." Richard breathed, backing up an involuntary step until his shoes hit the base of the ice sculpture. "You... you actually came."

"You look remarkably well for a man who burned to death in Massachusetts, Richard," I said, my voice carrying clearly over the hushed whispers of the aristocrats nearby.

He swallowed hard, trying desperately to regain his trademark composure—the same slick, sociopathic charm he had used to seduce my sister and bleed my family dry. "I did what I had to do, Maya. You backed me into a corner. Victor was insane. I had to secure my future. I had to secure *our* future."

"Our future?" A bitter, amused laugh escaped my lips. "You kissed Eleanor in my mother’s kitchen while my father was celebrating sixty-five years of life. You embezzled forty million dollars from our marriage trusts. You orchestrated an ambush that nearly killed my sister."

"Eleanor was weak!" Richard hissed, stepping closer, his eyes flashing with sudden, venomous desperation. "She was an easy door into your father's vault. But it was always you, Maya. Margarethe knows that. Margarethe chose *us*. If you sign the deeds tonight, we can rule the Trust together. You can have everything—the wealth, the prestige, total immunity."

"She doesn't want your blood money, Vance," Liam’s voice cut through the air like a razor.

Richard turned his glare to Liam, his hatred boiling over. "You think you're a savior, Liam? You're just Victor's discarded bastard! You think this family will accept you? You're a weapon with an expiration date!"

Before Richard could raise his hand, I stepped into his personal space, so close I could smell the familiar, sickening scent of his cologne.

"You never understood me, Richard," I said, looking straight into his hollow eyes. "You thought I stayed with you because I needed your validation. I stayed because I believed in loyalty. But once you broke that covenant, you stopped being a man to me. You became an eviction notice."

"Silence," a smooth, ancient voice cut through the ballroom from behind us.

The crowd parted instantly.

Margarethe von Berg stood there, leaning upon an ebony cane with an ivory snake head, flanked by four towering private security operatives. Her silver hair was coiled like a crown, and her pale blue eyes assessed me with the cold curiosity of a spider examining an exotic fly.