The Second Folder

The door opened before either of them found anywhere to hide.

Dorothea Corvin stood in the frame in the same gray silk from the gala, unsurprised in a way that told Isla she'd known exactly where to find them.

"Sebastian." Almost gentle, which was somehow worse than anger. "Leave us."

"Grandmother—"

"Now."

He looked at Isla, torn, and she nodded once — go.

The door clicked shut. Dorothea crossed the room slowly and settled into the chair behind the desk like she owned every second of the silence.

"You have the ledger."

Not a question, so Isla didn't answer it as one.

"You should know," Dorothea said, "that book has ended careers, marriages, entire branches of families more powerful than yours will ever be. I've spent forty years making sure it never left this room."

"Then maybe it's time it did."

Dorothea almost smiled. "Bold, for a girl whose mother I could still ruin with one phone call. Rosalind signed papers, Isla. Legal, binding, decades old — but breach one clause and every dollar the Trust has quietly sent your way since childhood becomes recoverable debt. I could take her house. I could take your degree. I could do it by Friday, and sleep perfectly well."

"You'd punish her for something you did to her."

"I would protect this family," Dorothea said, and for one flickering second something almost like grief moved behind her eyes, "the only way I ever learned how."

She stood, walked to the safe, and pulled out a second folder Isla hadn't known existed — thinner than Pruitt's, older, brittle at the edges.

"Take the ledger if you want it," Dorothea said. "But before you decide what to do with it, read this first. It concerns your father — not Alaric. Yours. The man Rosalind married after she left us."

She placed the folder on the desk, and for the first time all night, her hand was not quite steady.

"He wasn't who you think he was, Isla. And I'd wager your mother never told you why she really chose him."