The first thing Mara Hawthorne noticed after she struck the marble landing was the silence.

The knob turned slowly.

Celeste walked into the room without knocking. She was holding a mug of tea, her face painted with a thin, artificial smile.

"Mara," Celeste said, stepping inside and shutting the door quietly behind her. "I thought we should talk."

"About what?" Mara asked, standing up from the bed.

"About the foundation," Celeste said, taking a sip from her mug. "And about your place in this family."

Mara kept her hands folded over her stomach. "My place is beside my husband."

Celeste chuckled—a dry, bitter sound. "Daniel is a good boy. But he's weak. He always has been. My father knew it. That's why he left the real estate holdings in a dual-trust managed by Mother and me, not Daniel."

"Is that why you've been stealing from it?" Mara asked directly.

Celeste stopped smiling. The room seemed to drop ten degrees in an instant.

"Excuse me?"

"The wire transfers, Celeste," Mara said, her voice steady despite the rapid pounding of her heart. "Six hundred thousand dollars. I saw the ledgers before you locked them away."

Celeste stared at her for five long seconds. Then she set her tea mug down on the dresser with a heavy thud.

"You really are a little college-town nobody, aren't you?" Celeste said, her voice dripping with disgust. "You think you can walk into this family, marry my brother, and start dictating terms? That money belongs to the Hawthornes. I am a Hawthorne."

"That money belongs to a charitable foundation," Mara countered. "It's fraud, Celeste. It's federal embezzlement."

"And who are you going to tell?" Celeste stepped closer, her posture rigid and aggressive. "Daniel? Do you really think Daniel will side with you over his mother and sister? If you try to ruin us, Daniel will lose everything. The family name. His inheritance. His career. He will hate you for it."

"Daniel loves his son," Mara said firmly. "He won't let you drag our child into your corruption."

"This family survived long before you got here," Celeste spat, her face contorting with genuine malice. "And it will survive long after you're gone."

"Are you threatening me?"

Celeste took a deep breath, smoothing down the front of her designer blazer. Her expression shifted back into a cold, terrifying mask of politeness.

"I'm giving you advice, Mara," Celeste said softly. "Pack your bags. Take your little humble apartment downtown. Give Daniel a quiet divorce. Leave the baby with us—we can raise a Hawthorne properly—and we'll make sure you get a very comfortable monthly check."

Mara felt a surge of rage so intense it threatened to overcome her fear.

"Get out of my room," Mara commanded, pointing toward the door. "Get out before I call the police right now."

Celeste looked at Mara's phone sitting on the nightstand. She smiled—a cruel, twisted expression.

"You won't call anyone," Celeste said quietly. "Because you're weak, Mara. Just like your elevator-repairman father."

She turned and walked out of the room, leaving the door wide open.

Mara stood shaking in the middle of the room.

She picked up her phone, her fingers trembling violently.

She didn't call the police yet. She opened her security app.

Two days ago, after her meeting with Detective Moreno, Mara had installed a tiny, hidden camera inside the decorative frame of a painting hanging directly above the second-floor landing of the main staircase. It was a self-powered, motion-activated lens she had purchased online, syncing directly to an encrypted cloud server.

She checked the live feed on her phone.

The lens offered a crystal-clear, wide-angle view of the entire top staircase and the marble landing below.