"She walked out of that mansion with one hand on her cheek and the proof already waiting in her phone."

The slap came before the announcement.

Before the champagne toast.

Before Alexander Whitmore could open the small black jewelry box his mother was holding like a weapon.

Isabelle Hart’s head turned sharply to the side beneath the crystal chandelier, her dark brown hair swinging across her face as the sound cracked through the grand white foyer.

No one breathed.

The mansion was full of people in tuxedos and evening gowns, gathered around the marble floor in a perfect semicircle. Cream sofas sat behind them. The tall wooden double doors stood partly open, letting in a thin strip of cold blue night from the driveway outside.

Margaret Whitmore lowered her hand slowly.

At sixty-one, she was still beautiful in the polished way rich women were trained to be beautiful. Champagne lace dress. Pearl earrings. Gray-blonde hair shaped into perfection. One hand shaking slightly around a small black jewelry box.

“You were warned,” Margaret said.

Isabelle lifted trembling fingers to her cheek.

It burned.

But what hurt more was Alexander.

He stood beside his mother in a black tuxedo, clean-shaven, wealthy, frozen. The man who had promised to marry her. The man who had told her, just two hours earlier, that everything would be fixed tonight.

He did not move fast enough.

Elaine Mercer stood near him in a sleek black dress, her mouth slightly open, though her eyes betrayed something colder than surprise.

Satisfaction.

Isabelle looked from Elaine to Margaret, then finally to Alexander.

“You all planned this,” she whispered.

The words seemed to make the room smaller.

Margaret’s expression tightened. “Don’t make a scene.”

Isabelle almost laughed.

A scene?

Margaret had invited half of Boston’s richest families into the foyer. She had made them stand in a circle. She had lifted the Whitmore engagement ring in front of them like a crown Isabelle was never meant to touch.

Then she had struck her.

Isabelle lowered her hand from her cheek.

Her eyes were wet, but no tear fell.

“You already did,” she said.

Then she turned.

Alexander finally took one step forward. “Isabelle—”

But she was already walking toward the open doors.

Her white satin dress moved softly around her legs as she crossed the marble floor, past the whispering guests, past the warm chandelier light, out into the cold night where a black luxury sedan waited at the bottom of the stone steps.

Behind her, Margaret stood in the doorway gripping the jewelry box.

She thought Isabelle was leaving defeated.

She thought silence meant weakness.

Inside the car, Isabelle sat in the back seat with one hand still trembling against her cheek. Her phone buzzed in her palm.

Nora: Say the word.

Isabelle looked once at the glowing mansion behind her.

Then she answered the call.

“Send them the recording,” she said.