“Your ears are red, Caleb.”
He touched his ears, realized what he’d done, and retreated to the backyard with the cooler and whatever remained of his dignity.
I tried to enjoy it. I sat in the backyard, ate barbecue, and let Caleb teach me the card game I was terrible at.
“No, the queen goes there,” he said, pointing.
“I put the queen there.”
“That’s the king.”
“They look the same.”
“They absolutely do not look the same. One has a beard.”
“Maybe the queen has a beard. You don’t know her life.”
He laughed. I smiled. I was present. Underneath all of it, I was broken in a way that no amount of sweet tea and family warmth could reach.
Christopher called. I didn’t answer. He called again. And again. Twelve calls in two hours, each one lighting up my screen with his name, each one I declined, each one a fresh bruise.
I was about to turn off the phone entirely when a different name appeared.
Vicky.
I answered because she was my sister, and I would always answer for her.
She was screaming. “How did you DO it?” she yelled. “Miley, how did you do this? They offered me a job! A real job! With a salary, benefits, and documented income and the lawyer says this changes EVERYTHING for the case! Greg’s argumentfalls apart completely! Miley, how did you do this? Was this Christopher? Was this him?”
I sat in Anna’s backyard with the phone pressed to my ear and Caleb’s card game forgotten on the table. The barbecue smoke drifted past me and I thought about a man sitting on a sidewalk outside an ice cream shop in Coral Gables saying “Not for long” when I told him my sister’s lawyer was outgunned.
He’d done it.
Even before whatever happened with Seraphina. Even before the photos and the divorce papers and the letter I’d left on his desk. He’d made the call. He’d arranged the job.
He’d saved Vicky’s custody case.
And I’d left him.
“Miley?” Vicky’s voice, softer now. “Are you there? Are you crying?”
I was.
CHAPTER 22
Christopher
Trisha didn’t say hello. She said, “The photos are everywhere.”
I was in the middle of a meeting with the CFO about quarterly projections. I stood up and walked out. The CFO kept talking for three seconds before realizing I was gone.
“What photos?”
“You and Seraphina. Hotel bar. Two images. Every entertainment outlet in the country is running them. The headline on TMZ is ‘Vale’s Secret Hotel Meeting With Ex.’ CNN picked it up twenty minutes ago. Someone is calling it cheating allegations.” A pause, then Trisha’s voice went flat as she shoved the tablet in front of me. “Christopher, who took those photos?”
Esmeralda. I didn’t even have to think. The photos were taken through the hotel bar window from a distance, surveillance-angle—shots that required knowing where I’d be before I got there. Esmeralda had people following me. She’d seen me meet Seraphina and she’d weaponized it within hours.
But the photos alone weren’t enough. They showed two people at a table, close but not touching, incriminating only if you added context—and the context had been added. Someone had tipped the press. Someone had framed the narrative. And the only person with the motive, the resources, and theruthlessness to orchestrate this was the same woman who’d spent thirty years trying to erase me from the Vale name.
