The house with the blue shutters looks different at midnight.
Moonlight strips away all that hopeful charm Caspian tried to sell me on, leaving behind something skeletal and waiting.
I kill the engine and sit in the darkness for a long moment, trying to find the courage to walk inside and detonate what's left of my marriage.
Caspian opens the door before I reach the porch.
"You came."
His voice carries the exhaustion of a man who hasn't slept in days, and the relief underneath it makes my chest ache.
"I wasn't sure you would, after everything. After the way I handled things with those custody papers."
"Can we go inside? This is going to take a while, and I'd rather not have this conversation on the front porch."
He leads me to the living room, the same empty space where he kissed me and promised we could start over. The irony isn't lost on me.
"Before I start, I need you to let me finish. Don't interrupt, don't ask questions, just listen until I'm done. Can you do that?"
"Elara, you're scaring me. Whatever this is, just tell me."
"The masquerade."
I pull the laptop from my bag, setting it on the floor between us.
"Rhys planned it down to the last detail. He'd been watching me for months through a security company called Apex Surveillance Solutions. Cameras in the building across from our penthouse, aimed directly at our windows."
Caspian's face goes pale, but he doesn't speak.
"He saw everything. That goddamn dinner. The nights I cried alone while you worked late. He knew exactly how broken I was, exactly how desperate I'd become for someone to see me."
My voice cracks, but I force myself to continue.
"The invitation, the roses, the nickname 'little star'. He heard you use it at—"
"Our wedding." Caspian's hands curl into fists against his thighs. "He was at our wedding, and I never noticed."
"I found footage. Third table from the left, champagne in hand. He was already planning how to take me from you, Caspian. Years before he ever made his move."
I pull up the shell company documents on my laptop, turning the screen toward him.
"These are the financial records Tessa's father helped me trace. Three separate accounts established during Rhys's years in Switzerland, all feeding into a network that eventually funded Genevieve Ashford's gallery. He paid her five hundred thousand dollars, Caspian."
"Genevieve was working with him?"
His voice comes out strangled.
"He told her the money was an investment, made her feel special, seduced her the same way he seduced me. The night of the Whitmore gala, when your phone was stolen? He gave it to her. Told her some woman had been stalking you and needed to be scared off. She answered my call thinking she was helping you deal with a crazy ex-girlfriend."
"So when you called to tell me you were pregnant—"
"I heard her voice and assumed the worst. That's exactly what he wanted. He orchestrated every piece of it." The tears come now, hot and unwelcome. "I ran because I thought you'd betrayed me. I hid for ten months because I was too hurt and too proud to ask questions that might have revealed the truth."
Caspian's expression cycles through something I can barely watch—grief cracking the ice in his eyes, then rage tightening his jaw, then betrayal settling into the lines around his mouth like it's carving itself permanently into his face.
"There's more."
I force myself to continue.
"The board members who turned traitor? He compromised her. Margaret Wilson's daughter had gambling debts that vanished three months before the leak."
"He's been destroying my company from the inside."
"While everyone thought he was rotting in exile, he was planning to take everything from you. The same way your father took everything from his mother."
Caspian stands abruptly, pacing to the window where moonlight cuts his profile into something sharp and dangerous.
"You said there was more. What else, Elara? What else haven't you told me?"
This is the part that might break us.
"I slept with him. Not just at the masquerade—after. I went to him. I was so desperate to feel chosen that I ignored every warning sign."
The silence that follows is so complete I can hear my own heartbeat.
"I fell for it. All of it." The words taste like ash. "The vulnerability, the stories about his mother, the way he showed up when I was drowning. I was starting to fall in love with him, and that's the part I can never take back. Even now, knowing everything he did, some part of me is still grieving the person I thought he was."
Caspian turns from the window, and what I see in his face isn't the rage I expected. It's something worse—a devastation so complete it looks like watching someone die standing up.
"I'm sorry." The apology feels pathetically inadequate. "I'm so sorry for all of it. For believing the worst of you, for running instead of fighting, for letting another man into my heart when I was still wearing your ring."
"Where is he?"
Three words, cold as steel.
"Caspian, we need to take this evidence to the authorities. We need to do this the right way, through lawyers and courts and—"
"Where. Is. He."
He's already moving toward the door when the shadow fills the frame.
Rhys leans against the doorway, gun held loosely in one hand.
"Looking for me, cousin?"