His fiancée ordered the bleeding maid to continue scrubbing—until the billionaire followed the trail of blood on the marble floor and uncovered the truth hidden beneath his family’s vast fortune.

PART 9

Sirens approached across the water.

Odalys looked toward the Rhode Island State Police boats and Coast Guard cutter emerging through the rain. Her father lay bound in Silas Jr.’s rope. The black ledger was at her feet. Everything she had protected was ending.

She moved toward the rail.

Weston saw her. “Odalys.”

“Do not pretend you care what happens to me.”

“I care what happens to any person standing at the edge.”

“After tomorrow, I was supposed to have everything.”

Priya held Marcus upright and looked at her. “You had choices. You kept trading them for permission from your father.”

Odalys’s face twisted. “You think you are better than me because you bled prettily on a marble floor?”

“No. I think cruelty is a choice even when someone teaches it to you.”

For several seconds, Odalys stared down at the black water. Then she stepped back from the rail and raised her hands.

Everett did not surrender so calmly. He cursed his daughter, Wren, the Oseis, and the entire Castellan family while officers boarded. Odalys flinched at each word but did not withdraw her hands.

Paramedics took Marcus to the Coast Guard cutter. Another medic examined Priya’s palm and insisted she needed immediate surgery to repair two damaged tendons.

As they prepared to separate the siblings, Marcus caught her sleeve. “The records,” he said. “Did you release them?”

Weston held up his phone. “Every page. State and federal investigators have copies. So do three newspapers and the attorneys for the families named.”

Marcus relaxed against the stretcher.

Wren stood a few feet away, rain flattening her silver hair. An officer waited beside her.

“I am prepared to give a statement,” she said.

Weston looked at his mother. “A complete one?”

“There is no other kind left.”

She turned to Priya. “I cannot ask you to forgive me.”

“No,” Priya said. “You cannot.”

Wren nodded as if the words were a sentence she had expected. “I am sorry for what I did to Marcus. I am sorry for making your grief part of my strategy.”

“Then say it under oath. Say every name. Give back everything you helped hide.”

“I will.”