Tycoon Actor C552 (Patreon)

Lucas knew by now that anything he touched went viral. Fourteen million views on a silent fifteen-second clip filmed by strangers from a gallery railing wasn't surprising; it was just how things worked when you were the most-followed person on Twitter.

He owned the platform, yes, but the following had come before the acquisition. Nearly four hundred million people hadn't shown up because his name was on the paperwork.

Brady and the others knew this too. Which was why the conversation turned the way it did.

Raffey was still scrolling through the group photos on her phone. She stopped on one and held it up. "You know what? We should post these."

Everyone looked at her.

"Think about it," she said. "Lucas standing in the middle of all of us looking like somebody's grandfather. People are already going crazy over that platform clip. If we drop these photos on top of that?"

Joe was the first to laugh. "Why not? Those are going to get insane engagement. He looks like he's chaperoning a school trip."

"It'll make people curious about the film," Felicity said, leaning into it. "We haven't put out a single official image. If the first thing they see is Lucas looking eighty years old surrounded by a young cast, they're going to lose their minds trying to figure out what it's about."

Guy nodded. Even the crew members standing nearby were grinning.

Brady held up a hand. "Hang on. We're all having fun with this, but it's Lucas's face. We should probably ask him before we turn it into a campaign."

Fair point. The room looked at Lucas.

"It's fine by me." He shrugged. "Use whatever you want for promotion. I don't need to approve every post."

Raffey's eyes lit up. "Does that mean I can upload some of the short videos I took of us? On Vine?"

Lucas gave her a flat look. "I own Vine, Raffey."

"Is that a yes?"

"That's a 'post whatever you want.'"

Raffey grinned. Brady looked relieved.

---

With principal photography finished and no immediate obligations pulling them apart, the production settled into the loose rhythm that always followed a wrap. Venice gave them the excuse to stay.

Brady threw a wrap dinner at a restaurant near the Grand Canal, nothing formal; the crew had earned the right to eat well and drink too much without anyone making a speech about it.

Someone made a speech about it anyway.

Joe stood up with a glass of wine and said something about Brady being the only director who'd ever made him afraid of a scene, and Brady told him to sit down, and the table laughed, and that was the speech.

Over the next few days the cast drifted through Venice the way people do when they've been working together for months and suddenly have nowhere to be.

Felicity and Raffey spent an afternoon at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Guy disappeared into the city for two days and came back with three bottles of grappa and no explanation. Joe rented a boat and immediately got lost.

Lucas spent most of his time sketching.

He walked through Venice with Jack and Simon, sketchbook under his arm, stopping whenever a building or a bridge caught his attention.

He'd sit down somewhere and draw it. The skills he'd picked up from playing László through the «Mind Workshop» were still there — the architectural understanding, the painter's hand — and he wasn't about to let them go dull.

Brady and Mona ran into him one afternoon near the Rialto. He had his back against a wall, baseball cap pulled low, sunglasses on, the messy wig he used when he didn't want to be immediately spotted. Sketchbook on his knee. Brady glanced at the page — a clean architectural drawing of the bridge's support structure, detailed enough to look like it came from someone who'd studied it for years.

He and Mona exchanged a look but didn't say anything. The film had wrapped days ago. Lucas was still sketching buildings like an architect. It was hard not to wonder whether he'd ever fully let go of László, or if the narration technique just worked that way — the character leaving traces behind even after the performance ended.

They didn't ask. It wasn't their business, and Lucas didn't seem like he was performing anything. He just looked like a man who enjoyed drawing buildings. So they left him to it and went on with their afternoon.

The disguise, meanwhile, was hit or miss.

The cap and sunglasses bought him anonymity on quieter streets, but Lucas Knight was Lucas Knight.

A couple near San Marco saw through it and asked for a photo. A group of young people outside a café recognized his walk before they even saw his face.

He obliged each time without fuss, Jack and Simon keeping things easy from a few steps back.

By late July 2023, the days in Venice had run their course.

The goodbyes were short and warm. Felicity told Lucas she'd call when she saw the rough cut. Guy shook his hand, held it a beat longer than usual, and left it at that.

They went their separate ways. Brady, Mona, and a handful of crew members flew back with Lucas on his private jet to New York, post-production talk already starting somewhere over the Atlantic.

---

Meanwhile, Raffey posted.

A group selfie: the full cast and several crew members crowded together, grinning, Brady mid-laugh in the back. And in the center of the frame, Lucas, still in the full elderly László makeup, looking forty years older than everyone around him. She tagged him and wrote nothing except a single camera emoji.

Raffey's account wasn't large by industry standards. It didn't matter. The tag did the work. Lucas's name pulled the post into the feeds of millions who had never heard of Raffey Cassidy and didn't need to. They were there for the photo.

Within an hour, the post had crossed three hundred thousand views and was climbing.

"WHY DOES LUCAS LOOK 80 YEARS OLD. What film is this?? Someone explain immediately"

"Okay but the old-age makeup is genuinely incredible?? He looks like a completely different person. I almost scrolled past thinking it was someone's grandpa"

"So the film covers decades? He was young in the Budapest clips and now he's in full old-age makeup? How big is this story?"

"Raffeycassidy please I am BEGGING you to tell us what this movie is. We've been watching leaked set clips for months and nobody knows anything"

"This cast keeps getting more insane every time something leaks. Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy. Brady Corbet directing. And still no title. Not a single official word from anyone involved."

"I've seen every set photo and clip from this production and I STILL have no idea what the movie is about. Just that it involves a train station, a woman in a wheelchair, and apparently Lucas aging fifty years. I need this film immediately."

"Lucas went from the platform scene looking maybe forty to this photo looking eighty-something. Whatever this character goes through in this film, it's a full life. I'm not ready."

By the next morning, the post had passed two million views. Entertainment outlets were already picking it up.

The discussion didn't stop with comments. It spilled into articles, threads, video essays, the whole machinery of online speculation.

Deadline ran a short piece identifying the full cast from Raffey's photo. IndieWire published a breakdown of everything publicly known about the project, which amounted to a list of names, locations, and not much else. Variety reached out to Brady's team for comment and got nothing back.

Film forums picked the photo apart. The old-age prosthetics were the new fixation. People had already known Lucas was shooting something in Budapest; the Keleti platform clip had confirmed that months ago. What they hadn't known was that the film apparently spanned decades. The side-by-side comparisons — younger Lucas from the set photos placed beside the elderly version in Raffey's group shot — made it clear this wasn't a small story.

YouTube channels ran speculation videos. One titled "Lucas Knight's Secret Film: Everything We Know" pulled half a million views in two days despite having almost nothing concrete to report. The less that was confirmed, the more people wanted to talk about it.

Brady hadn't spent a cent on marketing. The film didn't even have a public title yet.

He didn't need one. The curiosity was doing all the work.

---

The private jet touched down at Teterboro in the late afternoon.

Lucas stepped off the plane with Brady, Mona, and the handful of crew who'd made the trip. East Coast heat pressed in from the tarmac. He pulled his cap lower and looked toward the terminal.

Jennifer was there. Cap, mask, simple clothes. And next to her, holding her hand and standing on her own two feet, was Sera.

Lucas stopped walking.

It had been months. He'd left for Budapest in the spring and hadn't been back since. They'd talked every day — calls, video, Sera babbling into the phone at odd hours — but that wasn't the same thing. He felt the distance of it close on him all at once.

He crossed the tarmac. Jennifer saw him coming and the composure she'd been holding dropped away. He reached her and pulled her in, one arm tight around her back, his face against the side of her head. She held on. Neither of them spoke for a moment.

"Hey, stranger," she said into his shoulder.

"Hey." He exhaled. "God, it's good to see you."

She pulled back and looked at him, eyes narrowing above the mask. "You've lost weight."

"I was playing a Holocaust survivor. I wasn't going to bulk up for it."

"That's not funny."

"I'm eating again. Promise." He brushed a strand of hair from her face. "I missed you. Both of you."

Her expression softened. "We missed you too. Sera kept pointing at the TV every time she saw your face."

He crouched down. Sera was watching him with the specific scrutiny of a toddler who hadn't decided yet whether this tall person matched the voice she'd been hearing through a phone for months.

Twenty months old now. Steadier on her feet, something sharper in the way she studied people. She'd changed in ways a screen couldn't communicate.

Then she reached for him, and Lucas picked her up. She grabbed at his collar and said something that was almost a word, and he laughed, and that was enough.

Brady and Mona had stayed back near the plane. They watched from a distance and didn't approach. Some moments weren't for an audience.

After a few minutes, Lucas came over with Sera on his hip. Brady shook Jennifer's hand. Mona hugged her. They kept it brief — Brady mentioned they'd be in touch about the post-production schedule and left it there. The crew filtered toward their own cars.

Lucas, Jennifer, Sera, Jack, and Simon got into the waiting SUV. Shawn pulled away from the terminal and merged onto the highway.

The car was quiet for a stretch. Sera was drowsy against Lucas's chest, the heat and the travel catching up with her. Jennifer had her hand on his arm, not saying much, just sitting with the fact of him being beside her again.

"The paparazzi situation," Lucas said. "It got better?"

Jennifer had mentioned it on one of their video calls a few weeks into his shoot — photographers staking out LK Hospital after her visits to Vince, tailing her SUV through midtown.

"It settled down," she said. "They camped outside the hospital for a while, tried to follow me to appointments, shopping, wherever. Anywhere I went twice, they showed up with cameras the third time." She shrugged. "Security started rotating vehicles and switching routes. Eventually the paps got bored when they couldn't get a clean shot."

"Did they ever get close to Sera?"

"Not once. Security team made sure of that."

Lucas nodded. He'd heard most of this already in fragments over the phone, but hearing it in person loosened something he'd been carrying since Budapest.

A few miles passed. Sera shifted against his chest, murmured something into his shirt, and settled again.

He waited until they were on the turnpike before he asked.

"How's Vince?"

Jennifer had been expecting it. "The first round of treatment was rough. He lost weight, couldn't keep food down. The doctors didn't want to promise anything." She paused. "But the last few weeks have been different. His numbers are trending the right way. They're not calling it remission, but they're saying things like 'responding well.' He's eating. Walking the halls again."

Lucas looked out the window for a moment. Then: "That's good."

Jennifer watched him. He didn't show much when it came to Vince. He never had. But she'd been married to him long enough to read what sat underneath the stillness. The man hadn't forgiven his father, and she didn't think he ever fully would. But concern had found its way through months ago and hadn't left.

She didn't push it. She never did.

"What about the legal side?" Lucas said. "Where's the team with Vince's evidence?"

"They've been building the case since you left. Everything he turned over — the recordings, the financial trail, the emails tying Myla to Geoffrey's circle." She glanced at Sera, still sleeping against him. "The lead attorney says the structure is solid. What Vince gave them is real, and it holds up."

Lucas was quiet for a beat. "Tell them to move. I want filings ready by the time I'm settled in. Myla first. Geoffrey's civil suits are already in motion, but Myla's been sitting untouched for too long."

Jennifer nodded. She'd been waiting for him to say it.

The evidence Vince had handed over wasn't circumstantial. The video call recordings, the paper trail linking Myla to Geoffrey's foundation, the go-between fixer, the direct statement Vince had witnessed — all of it pointed one way. The woman had been involved in the attempt on Lucas's life, and she'd spent every month since then walking free while the proof gathered dust in a law office.

Not anymore.

'Finally,' she thought. She looked at Lucas, at Sera curled against his chest, at the highway stretching ahead of them. 'This should have happened months ago. But it's happening now, and that's what matters.'

---

The SUV turned off the highway and wound its way into Lower Manhattan.

They didn't go to the Knight Residence. The hotel had Lucas's name attached to it, and where Lucas's name went, paparazzi followed.

Not ideal when you were trying to keep a toddler out of the public eye.

Before he'd left for Hungary, Lucas had his team buy a townhouse in Tribeca. Quiet street, no fuss, the kind of place you'd walk past without a second glance. Jennifer and Sera had been staying there since. Close to three months now.

Shawn pulled the SUV into the narrow private garage. The door closed behind them.

They went inside. The house was quiet, the air cool, late afternoon light coming through the rear windows. Martha was already there, taking Sera from Lucas's arms with the practiced ease of someone who'd done it a thousand times. Sera went without complaint, half-asleep and not particularly interested in whose arms she was in as long as someone's were available.

Lucas had never been inside. He'd had the team handle the purchase before leaving for Hungary; he'd only seen photos. The place felt like Jennifer's now — her things on the hooks, Sera's toys by the couch. She'd made it a home without him.

Jennifer touched his arm. "Come on. You need to sleep."

He didn't argue.

...

The rest was short. Lucas slept through the evening and most of the night, woke early, and by mid-morning was already in the car.

He and Jennifer went to the LK Foundation first.

Daciana was waiting for them in the common area when they arrived. She spotted Lucas through the glass partition and her whole face changed — not dramatically, not the way a child in a film would react, but in the quieter way of someone who had learned to hold her excitement close until she was sure it was safe to let it out.

Then she saw Jennifer behind him, and the restraint broke.

"Papa! Mama!"

She ran to them. Lucas crouched and caught her. Jennifer knelt beside him, one hand on Daciana's back, the other brushing hair from the girl's face.

They stayed like that for a moment, the three of them on the floor of the foundation's common room, staff moving quietly around them and pretending not to watch.

Daciana's English had sharpened considerably since their last visit. She talked quickly, jumping between subjects — the other children, a book she'd been reading, a drawing she'd made that she wanted to show them. Lucas let her go at her own pace.

When the conversation settled, he brought up what he'd come to tell her.

"The adoption papers are moving," he said. "My grandfather has been helping. His people have been working with the courts in Romania and with the agencies here. It should be finalized within the next month or so."

Daciana looked at him. She understood what that meant, even at her age. "Daciana will come home?"

"Yeah." Lucas nodded. "You're coming home."

Jennifer squeezed her hand. Daciana didn't say anything else. She just held on tighter, and that was enough.

They spent another hour with her before leaving. Jennifer was quiet in the car afterward, looking out the window, processing it in her own way. Lucas didn't interrupt.

---

LK Hospital was a fifteen-minute drive from the foundation.

Lucas went up alone. Jennifer stayed in the lobby with Jack; she'd been visiting Vince regularly for months and knew when Lucas needed the room to himself.

The hallway on Vince's floor was clean and bright, the kind of clinical warmth that expensive hospitals managed to pull off — somewhere between sterile and comfortable.

A nurse nodded to Lucas as he passed. He nodded back.

The door to Vince's room was open.

Lucas stepped inside and stopped.

Vince was thinner. That was the first thing. The treatment had carved weight off him in the way chemotherapy does — not gradually, but in visible chunks, the face narrower, the arms smaller inside the hospital gown.

He was propped up against the pillows, reading something on a tablet, and he looked like a man who had been through several bad months and was only now coming out the other side.

But he was sitting up. His color was better than the last time Lucas had seen him. The IV drip beside the bed was there, but he wasn't hooked up to it — the tray on the bedside table had a half-eaten meal on it, which meant he was keeping food down.

The doctors had said his numbers were trending in the right direction, and looking at him now, Lucas could see what they meant. Not healthy. Not recovered. But no longer declining.

"Son." Vince's eyes found him from the bed, and he smiled. It was a tired smile, but it reached his eyes. "You're back."

Lucas pulled the chair closer to the bed and sat down. The man in front of him bore almost no resemblance to the Vince Knight he'd grown up with — the industry figure who'd carried himself like every room owed him something. That version was gone.

What was left was just a man in a hospital bed, thinner than he should be, smiling at his son like it was the best part of his week.

"How're you doing?" Lucas asked.

Vince exhaled through his nose, half-laugh, half-sigh. "Better than two months ago. That's the bar I'm working with." He shifted against the pillows. "The second round went smoother than the first. Doctor says the tumor's responding. Not shrinking yet, but it's stopped growing, which apparently is cause for optimism around here." He gestured vaguely at the room. "They keep telling me my bloodwork looks encouraging. I've decided to believe them."

Lucas studied him. "You're eating?"

"Three meals. Small ones, but they stay down." Vince looked at him. "The staff here is good, Lucas. Really good. I don't say that to flatter you — I say it because I've been in hospitals before and none of them were like this."

Lucas nodded. He didn't say you're welcome or I'm glad. He just sat with it for a moment, the two of them in the quiet of the room, the monitors beeping softly in the background.

"Jennifer's been coming by," Vince said. "Every week, sometimes twice. You know that?"

"I know."

"She didn't have to do that."

"No," Lucas said. "She didn't."

Vince looked at him for a long moment, something working behind his eyes that he seemed to decide against saying out loud. Instead he just nodded, slowly, and let the silence carry what the words wouldn't.

Lucas let the quiet sit for a moment longer. Then he said what he'd come to say.

"I'm filing against Myla. Civil suit. My legal team has been building the case since you turned over the evidence." He watched Vince's face. "I wanted to tell you in person before it hits the court."

He'd expected something — hesitation, guilt, a flicker of the old defensiveness. Something that said the man still had a wire connecting him to the woman he'd married.

Instead, Vince just nodded. "Good."

Lucas looked at him.

"I loved that woman, Lucas. For years, I loved her blindly. Defended her when people told me something was off. Ignored things I should have paid attention to."

His voice was steady, but there was weight under it.

"By the time I finally opened my eyes, she'd already done what she'd done. And I had to live with the fact that I'd been sleeping next to someone who wanted my son dead." He paused. "So yeah. File it. This is why I gave you everything I had."

Lucas held his gaze, then nodded once.

"Geoffrey too," Lucas added. "I'll be filing against him at the same time. The evidence ties them together closely enough that the attorneys want to present it as one case."

Vince looked at him differently. "The defamation suit against the platforms. You're going in next month?"

"Yeah."

"And you're about to file a murder conspiracy suit against the same man who's currently in court playing victim." A thin smile crossed Vince's face. "That's going to land on him like a truck."

"That's the point."

Vince studied him for a moment. "You've been sitting on this for a while."

"I had time to think during the shoot."

Lucas stood. "Get some rest. I'll come back before the filing goes through."

Vince nodded. He didn't try to keep him there. He'd figured out months ago that Lucas came and went on his own terms, and pulling at him only made him pull away.

The door closed.

Vince stared at the ceiling for a long time. Then he closed his eyes and let himself feel something he knew he hadn't earned.

Pride.

---

Days passed. August arrived.

Geoffrey Eckstein's defamation suit against Netflix and HBO Max had been grinding through the courts since the start of the year. The proceedings weren't televised, but reporters sat through every session and filed updates that kept the public fed.

The case itself was straightforward on paper — Geoffrey alleged that the documentary series produced by both platforms constituted a coordinated campaign to destroy his reputation, and that a figure he identified only as "L.K." had used his influence as a stakeholder to push the projects forward.

Everyone knew who L.K. was.

Public opinion had settled into a messy split. The majority leaned against Geoffrey. The documentaries had been thorough, the testimony from victims difficult to dismiss, and the clip of Daciana trembling at the sight of his photograph had burned itself into the public consciousness in a way no legal filing could undo.

But there were voices on the other side too. People who pointed out that Lucas Knight owned stakes in both platforms and questioned whether documentary filmmaking should be driven by a billionaire with a personal agenda.

People who argued that the courts should decide, not public opinion. A smaller but vocal contingent who simply didn't trust anyone with that much money and that much influence, regardless of what they did with it.

The conversation had been running at a steady simmer for months. Cable news panels discussed it. Legal commentators broke down the filings. Social media argued in circles.

Lucas was expected to appear at the proceedings the following week. That alone had kept the story in the headlines.

Then, before any of that could play out, the bomb dropped.

...

Lucas's legal team filed in the Southern District of New York on a Tuesday morning. Civil suit. Two defendants: Myla Knight and Geoffrey Eckstein. The allegation: conspiracy to commit murder, specifically their joint involvement in the assassination attempt on Lucas Knight's life.

The filing cited physical evidence, financial records, recorded communications, and direct witness testimony.

Court documents were public record. The media had them within the hour.

BREAKING — AP: "Lucas Knight Files Civil Lawsuit Against Stepmother Myla Knight and Financier Geoffrey Eckstein, Alleging Conspiracy in Assassination Attempt"

THE NEW YORK TIMES: "Knight v. Knight: Lucas Knight Accuses Stepmother and Billionaire Geoffrey Eckstein of Plotting to Kill Him"

CNN: "Lucas Knight Drops Bombshell Lawsuit: Claims His Own Stepmother Conspired with Geoffrey Eckstein to Have Him Murdered"

BBC: "Hollywood Star Lucas Knight Files Explosive Civil Suit Linking Stepmother to Eckstein Network in Murder Plot"

REUTERS: "Civil Complaint Filed by Lucas Knight Names Two Defendants in Alleged Assassination Conspiracy — Court Documents Reveal Financial and Communication Evidence"

TMZ: "LUCAS KNIGHT SAYS HIS STEPMOM TRIED TO HAVE HIM KILLED — AND GEOFFREY ECKSTEIN HELPED"

The story didn't build. It detonated.

Within an hour of the filing hitting public record, every major news outlet on the planet was carrying it. Local broadcasts in dozens of countries interrupted regular programming. The story jumped languages in real time — Japanese outlets, Korean networks, European press, South American news channels, all of them running the same headline in their own words.

Lucas Knight. Stepmother. Assassination. Geoffrey Eckstein.

The internet couldn't process it fast enough.

People had known for years that Lucas and Myla had bad blood. The estrangement was public knowledge — tabloids had covered it, fans had speculated about it, and Lucas had never once spoken about her publicly in anything resembling warm terms.

But bad blood was one thing. A formal allegation that the woman had conspired to have him murdered was something else entirely.

"I knew Myla was bad news but I genuinely never imagined it went THIS far. She tried to have her own stepson killed? What kind of person does that?"

"Everyone's acting shocked but some of us called this years ago. That woman was always off. The way she used to talk about Lucas in interviews before he cut her off — there was real hatred there."

"This is insane. An actual assassination plot. Against the most famous person on the planet. Involving his own family. This isn't a movie."

"And GEOFFREY ECKSTEIN is named in the suit?? The same guy currently suing Netflix for defamation?? The man is literally in court claiming HE'S the victim and now Lucas is saying he helped plan a murder. This is about to get so ugly."

"I need to see the evidence before I pick a side. Lucas is powerful enough to make anyone's life hell through the courts. That doesn't mean everything in the filing is true."

"Honest question — if the evidence is as strong as the filing suggests, why a civil suit and not criminal charges? Is this about justice or money?"

"Civil suits have a lower burden of proof. Lucas's team probably knows the criminal threshold is harder to meet with what they have. This is the smarter play."

"I don't care about the legal strategy. A woman allegedly tried to have someone killed. If the evidence is there, she belongs in prison."

The discussion swallowed everything else online. Geoffrey's defamation case, which had been the dominant legal story for months, was suddenly an afterthought. Every trending topic, every news ticker, every push notification on every phone — all of it pointed at the same thing.

Lucas Knight had just turned a defamation lawsuit into a murder conspiracy case. And nobody was talking about documentaries anymore.

---

In Las Vegas, Myla was having the time of her life.

She'd driven out two days ago on a whim — Vince gone, the house too quiet, nothing keeping her in LA. She'd checked into the Bellagio, ordered room service she didn't need, and spent most of her time on the casino floor doing exactly what she wanted.

She was at the blackjack table when it started.

A woman two seats over glanced at her phone, then looked up at Myla. Held the look a beat too long before turning away. Myla didn't think much of it. People stared sometimes. She was well-dressed, she carried herself a certain way. It happened.

Then the dealer's expression changed. Subtle — just a flicker, eyes dropping to his phone below the table before coming back up. He dealt the next hand normally, but something in the way he looked at her had shifted.

A couple at the far end of the table leaned into each other, whispering. One of them glanced her direction.

Myla ignored it. She hit on fifteen, busted, shrugged, and signaled for another hand.

More looks. A man at the slots near the bar had his phone angled in her direction. A cocktail waitress who'd been friendly ten minutes ago was suddenly nowhere to be found.

'What is everyone's problem tonight?'

She brushed it off and kept playing.

Then her phone buzzed. She pulled it from her clutch without looking. Buzzed again. She ignored it — she was mid-hand. It buzzed a third time, and she glanced at the screen.

Her lawyer. Three missed calls in two minutes.

She excused herself from the table.

She answered on the way to the restroom, heels clicking on the marble floor. "What is it?"

The conversation lasted less than three minutes.

By the time she pushed through the bathroom door, her face had gone white. Two women stood at the mirrors fixing their makeup. Myla didn't see them. She braced both hands on the counter and stared at her own reflection without processing it.

Civil suit. Filed in New York. Her name. Geoffrey's name. Conspiracy. Assassination attempt. Public record.

Her phone buzzed again — a news alert this time. She saw her own face in the thumbnail beside Lucas's. The words murder plot in the headline.

"How?" she whispered at the mirror. "How does he know?"

Her mind raced. She'd been careful. Everything between her and Geoffrey's people had been handled through the right channels, the right intermediaries. There shouldn't have been anything to find.

Then she thought of Vince.

She'd caught him. Months ago. Going through her laptop, her files. She'd walked into the room and he was just sitting there with her things open in front of him. The fight that followed had been bad — loud, ugly, the kind that cracked something between them that didn't mend. He'd left not long after. No explanation, no forwarding address.

At the time, she'd told herself he hadn't found anything that mattered. That he'd been snooping the way suspicious husbands snoop — looking for texts, emails, proof of an affair.

Not proof of anything else. Vince wasn't smart enough for that. He wasn't the type to dig that deep. He didn't have it in him.

But the complaint wasn't vague. It referenced recorded communications, financial documentation, and witness testimony. She didn't need to read further to feel her stomach drop.

'How much did he actually take that night?'

She'd never confirmed. She'd just assumed.

And she hadn't heard from him since. He'd vanished, and she'd let him, because Vince always ran when things got ugly. It hadn't occurred to her that his silence might mean something worse.

She called Geoffrey. It rang until it didn't. She tried again, then a third time. The third call went straight to nothing. He'd blocked her.

She slammed the phone against the counter. The screen cracked.

The two women at the mirrors flinched. One grabbed her bag and left without looking back. The other hesitated, then followed, heels clicking fast on the tile.

The door swung shut. Myla was alone.

She tried Vince. The line didn't connect. She tried again. Same — no ring, no voicemail. Blocked.

"Are you kidding me?" She slammed the phone down again. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

Her voice bounced off the tile walls. She gripped the counter and stared at herself in the mirror — mascara smudged, chest heaving.

"Geoffrey. You coward." She laughed, short and ugly. "The second it gets real, you block me? After everything? After what I did for you — for your people?" She kicked the base of the counter. "You promised me. You said nothing would trace back. You said I was protected. And now you won't even pick up the goddamn phone?"

She was pacing now, back and forth across the bathroom, talking to no one.

"Twenty years I kept my mouth shut for these people. Twenty years. And this is what I get? Thrown out like I'm nothing the moment it costs them something?" She stopped, pressing her palms flat on the counter. "Fuck you, Geoffrey. Fuck every single one of you."

She caught her breath. Stared at her own reflection.

"And Vince..." She said the name quieter. "Where the hell are you, Vince? What did you do?"

She didn't know. Not for sure. But the filing described things that could only have come from someone who'd been inside her life. And the only person who'd been anywhere near her files was the man who'd disappeared without a trace after their fight.

"It doesn't matter. I'll deny it. All of it. I don't care what they filed. I don't care what they think they have." She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "It's a civil suit. It's not criminal. They can't put me in prison with a civil suit."

Her voice got quieter.

"They have nothing. Recordings? What recordings? Financial records? Anyone can fake those. It won't hold up. None of it will hold up..."

She trailed off. The muffled noise of the casino floor bled through the door.