Milo's scream tears through the apartment at 2:17 a.m.
I'm out of bed before my brain catches up, stumbling through darkness toward the nursery, heart slamming with the specific terror reserved for mothers and small hours.
"Hey, hey, I'm here. Mama's here."
My hand touches his forehead and the world tilts sideways. He's burning up—skin so hot it feels like touching a radiator, his small body rigid with distress.
"Okay, baby. Okay, we're going to fix this."
The thermometer confirms it: 102.3 degrees. I fumble for the infant Tylenol, measuring with shaking hands.
"I know it tastes terrible, sweetheart. I know. But you have to swallow it for me, okay? Can you do that?"
He takes the medicine with a grimace that would be comical under any other circumstances.
My laptop sits open on the kitchen counter where I left it hours ago, Tessa's research files still glowing against the dark.
Both your son and your investigation are in crisis, and you can only hold one at a time.
I hold Milo tighter and make a decision.
"We're going to figure this out together. Both things. All of it."
I settle into the rocking chair with my laptop balanced on the armrest, Milo's feverish body against my chest. The shell company documents blur and sharpen as I scroll, my free hand rubbing circles on his back.
"Your temperature is still 102, little one. Fifteen more minutes and we can try more medicine."
The Swiss holdings emerge like bones in shallow water. Three accounts, all established during Rhys's exile, all feeding into the network that funded Genevieve's gallery.
"He was planning this for years, Milo. While everyone thought he was rotting in some Alpine boarding school, he was planning to destroy his own family."
My son whimpers against my neck, and I check his temperature again. 101.8. Still too high, but moving in the right direction.
"That's good, baby. You're doing so good."
Then I find it.
A security company on Rhys's payroll. Apex Surveillance Solutions. I pull up their client list and my blood turns to ice.
The same company installed cameras in the building across from my old penthouse.
"Oh God."
He was watching. The night I poured my heart out while Caspian scrolled his phone—Rhys saw every tear. He watched me beg my husband to see me, watched Caspian walk out, watched me stand alone in candlelight until the flames died.
"He knew I was broken before he ever sent that invitation."
The realization lands like a diagnosis—the kind where the doctor keeps talking but you've already stopped hearing.
I was falling in love with him.
God, I was actually falling in love with him.
The texts at two in the morning. The way he hummed to Milo. The story about his mother, about watching her funeral on a six-inch screen. I ate it up like a starving woman, convinced I'd finally found someone who understood what it meant to be invisible.
"I'm such an idiot, Milo. I'm such a stupid, desperate idiot."
The tears come hot and fast. Here's the thing about being manipulated by someone genuinely good at it: you don't feel tricked. You feel seen.
He remembered my coffee order. He knew my comfort food. He showed up when I was drowning. And I thought this is what being chosen feels like.
"Everything was a lie. Every single moment."
The apartment, the furniture, the way he assembled Milo's crib while humming lullabies. The clients for Tessa's firm. The vulnerability in his eyes when he talked about his mother.
All of it calculated, all of it designed to make me trust him while he systematically destroyed the man I was still legally married to.
"Mama needs to check something, sweetheart. Can you hold on for me?"
I navigate to our wedding footage. The file takes forever to load.
"Almost there."
The reception footage finally buffers. I scrub forward to the toasts, watching faces flash past until I find the moment I'm looking for.
Caspian stands at the head table, champagne glass raised, his ice-blue eyes soft in a way I'd almost forgotten he was capable of.
"To my wife," his recorded voice says. "My little star. The only light worth navigating by."
I freeze the frame and scan the background.
There. Third table from the left. Eyes fixed not on me specifically, with an expression I recognize now with horrible clarity.
Hunger. Calculation. Patience.
Rhys Voss, watching me become a wife, already planning how to unmake me.
"He heard it at the wedding. 'Little star.' He filed it away and used it at the masquerade to make me believe—"
The sob that tears out of me is ugly and raw.
I defended him. I defended him to Caspian, to Tessa, to myself. I let him into my bed and my heart and my son's life because I was so hungry for someone to choose me that I ignored every red flag he waved like a goddamn parade.
"I wanted it to be real. I wanted him to be real so badly that I made myself blind."
Milo stirs against my shoulder, and the guilt compounds—my sick child comforting me.
"I'm sorry, baby. Mama's okay. Mama's going to be okay."
The thermometer beeps at 4:47 a.m. 100.1 degrees. Still elevated, but the crisis is passing.
"That's my strong boy. You're fighting so hard, aren't you? Just like your mama."
I hold him through the gray hours before dawn, watching the sky lighten through the window while my heart reassembles itself around this new, brutal truth. Rhys had access to every intimate detail of my marriage before he ever made his move.
And I loved him.
Or I was starting to.
And that's the part that makes me want to scrub my skin raw—that some part of me is still grieving the loss of who I thought he was.
"We have him, Milo. We finally have him."
His fever breaks at 5:23 a.m., his skin cooling under my palm like a miracle. He sighs against my neck, finally relaxing into real sleep.
I cry harder then—for him, for myself, for the woman who walked into a masquerade believing she was saving her marriage when she was walking into a trap set years before.
"I'm so sorry," I whisper into his hair. "I'm so sorry for everything I put us through. For not seeing what was right in front of me."
The sun breaks over the skyline. My son sleeps peacefully. My laptop displays evidence that will clear my husband's name.
I reach for my phone with steady hands.
I have proof. Meet me tonight.
Caspian's response comes thirty seconds later: Where?
The house with the blue shutters. 8pm. Come alone.
I set the phone down and press a kiss to Milo's forehead, breathing in the sweet baby smell of him, the warmth of his small body finally at peace.
"It's almost over, sweetheart. Mama's going to make this right."