Kessler

"Say that again," Isabel said, phone pressed so hard to her ear it hurt.

"Kessler Fine Arts," Camille said, breathless like she'd run somewhere to make the call in private. "The gallery. The one that fired you for skimming off consignment sales — which, by the way, I never actually believed until now. I pulled the corporate filings for a completely different reason and — Iz, the parent holding company is registered to a trust. Harlow Meridian."

The name landed like a dropped glass.

"That's not possible," Isabel said, and heard how thin her own voice sounded saying it.

"I checked three times. Harlow Meridian Trust owns forty percent of Kessler Fine Arts' parent company. Has for four years. Iz, that's before you even started working there. Before you met Sebastian. Before any of this."

Isabel's mind moved fast, faster than she wanted it to, assembling a picture she didn't want finished. Josephine Kade hadn't discovered Isabel eight months ago at a museum fundraiser. Josephine Kade — or whoever actually ran Harlow Meridian — had owned a piece of the gallery Isabel worked at for years before that. Had access to her personnel file, her termination, whatever "interesting circumstances" Perry Nash had turned up on his very thorough background check.

Which meant none of this — the overheard conversation, the unlocked ledger, the folder behind the bookshelf that had been just findable enough — had happened by accident.

She'd been handed every single piece of this. Like breadcrumbs. Like bait.

The office door opened before she could finish the thought.

Perry Nash walked in first, unhurried, a fresh folder under his arm — thicker than the settlement agreement, thicker than anything she'd seen from him yet. Josephine followed, cane tapping a slow, unbothered rhythm across the floorboards, and behind her, looking like a man walking into a headache he hadn't chosen, came Sebastian.

"Sebastian—" Isabel started.

"Sit down, Isabel," Josephine said, not unkindly, in the exact same tone she'd used in the library the night before. "I believe it's time we finished this conversation properly."

Perry set the folder on the desk and opened it, and the first page inside was a photograph Isabel recognized instantly, because it was seven years old and she'd hoped to God nobody in this life would ever see it again — a different city, a different last name on a different engagement announcement, a different family's fortune she'd gotten three-quarters of the way to marrying into before it had all fallen apart.

"You've done this before," Josephine said. "Haven't you, Miss Marchetti. Or should I say — Miss Voss?"