I was raising my champagne glass when our maid burst into the ballroom, pale and shaking.

Two days later, I drove to the county detention facility where Celeste was being held without bail, pending trial for attempted murder, forgery, and grand larceny.

The visitor’s room was sterile and cold, smelling faintly of bleach and cheap coffee. I sat on one side of the thick glass partition, wearing a crisp charcoal suit, waiting patiently.

The metal door opened, and Celeste stepped inside, wearing an oversized orange jumpsuit. Her hair was unwashed, her makeup gone, and the icy composure she had maintained for months was cracking at the edges.

She sat down, picking up the heavy telephone receiver. I picked up mine.

“Did you come to gloat, Evelyn?” she asked, her voice raspy through the small speaker. “To see the great Celeste in handcuffs?”

“I came to offer you a deal, Clara,” I said, using her real name deliberately.

She flinched slightly when she heard her true identity, but quickly tried to regain her smug demeanor. “You think you’ve won? The video shows me putting something in a cake. My defense team will claim it was a harmless powder—a holistic supplement. You can’t prove intent to murder without a confession.”

I smiled faintly, pulling a folder from my bag and pressing it against the glass.

“This is the toxicology report from the amber bottle police retrieved from your purse,” I said. “Pure concentrated liquid digitalis. It matches the exact compound found in my father’s blood work over the last two months. And this second document is a copy of your fingerprints from the murder scene in Chicago four years ago.”

Celeste’s eyes widened slightly, though she tried to keep her breathing steady.

“The Chicago police are reopening the case into Arthur Pendelton’s death,” I continued. “They have matched the MO precisely. You find wealthy, lonely men, isolate them from their families, alter their estate plans, and gradually poison them until their hearts give out.”

“You have no proof of Chicago!” she hissed.

“I don't need to prove Chicago to send you to prison for life in New York, Clara,” I said calmly. “Between the attempted murder charges, the corporate fraud, and the forty million dollars in stolen trust funds, you are never going to see the outside of a federal penitentiary again.”

She leaned closer to the glass, her dark eyes flashing with pure hatred. “Your father loved me, Evelyn. He was lonely, tired, and desperate for affection. I gave him what you never could—warmth. He trusted me more than he ever trusted his own daughter.”

“He trusted a illusion,” I replied. “And now the illusion is over. If you cooperate with the prosecutors and reveal who helped you set up the offshore accounts and bypass our corporate security systems, I will ask the DA to take the life sentence off the table in favor of thirty years.”

Celeste laughed—a sharp, hysterical sound. “You think I’m the brain behind this, Evelyn? You think a woman like me just stumbles into a billionaire’s life with a perfect legal strategy and offshore accounts ready to go?”