“Emily.”
It came out thin, almost childlike, and that made it worse than any insult his parents had thrown at me. Liam reached for the page, but Elena slid it back under her palm before his fingers touched it.
“Do not interfere with service,” she said.
The harbor officer behind her did not raise his voice. He didn’t need to. One hand rested on the rail, the other near his radio, and suddenly every guest on that deck remembered there were witnesses who did not care about last names or summer invitations.
Richard’s hands shook so badly the ash from his dead cigar dusted his white shirt. Victoria kept looking from Liam to the folder, her lips moving without sound, as if she could still find a sentence sharp enough to cut her way out.
Then Elena lifted one more sheet from the back pocket of the case.
It was not the foreclosure notice. It was a collateral acknowledgment schedule, time-stamped 8:02 a.m. the previous Friday, with Liam’s initials beside a transfer line I had never seen him mention. The yacht was not the only thing pledged.
For the first time since I had known him, Liam looked at his father like a son who had just realized he had been used as paperwork.
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