HE WAS TREATED LIKE DIRT AT HIS SISTER’S BILLION-DOLLAR WEDDING DINNER—UNTIL HE OPENED A BLACK LEATHER FOLDER THAT COST HER HUSBAND EVERYTHING

Victoria didn’t understand finance, but she understood the look on her husband’s face.

She had been married to Richard Sterling for four years. She had seen him arrogant; she had seen him stressed during quarterly earnings; she had seen him furious when a golf swing went astray. But she had never, not once, seen him look terrified.

He wasn’t just pale; his skin had taken on a gray, waxy pallor, like a corpse that had spent three days in a river. Sweat beaded along his hairline, dripping down his temple to pool at his collar.

“Richard?” Victoria’s voice had lost its shrill arrogance. It was now small, fragile, and trembling. “Richard, what is he talking about? Forty-two million dollars? What is Nautilus Horizon?”

Richard didn’t answer. His lips moved, but no sound came out. He looked like an astronaut whose tether had just snapped in deep space.

Robert Vance stepped forward, his heavy hand coming down on Richard’s shoulder with enough force to make the younger man wince. The patriarch’s face was dark with thunderous rage.

“Answer the question, Richard,” Robert barked. “Did you steal from Sovereign Crest? Did you embezzle funds from the company carrying my family’s name?”

“No! I—Father, listen to me—” Richard sputtered, finally finding his voice, though it was frantic and thin. “It’s a setup! Ethan fabricated those documents! He’s bitter! He’s always been jealous of me! He’s using some tech trick, some offshore shell game to frame me because he wants to tear this family apart!”

Richard turned his desperate, bloodshot eyes toward the dinner guests, who were now watching the spectacle with morbid fascination.

“You all know me!” Richard shouted, gesturing wildly. “Judge Harrison! Senator Miller! You’ve known me for years! Do I look like a criminal? Ethan is a rogue! He’s a disgraced dropout who bought some cheap equity to stage a coup!”

“A coup?” Ethan chuckled. The sound was dry, humorless, and devastating.

Ethan pulled his smartphone from his blazer pocket. He tapped the screen three times, turned the volume to maximum, and laid the phone flat on the table between them.

The room held its breath.

An audio recording began to play. The sound quality was crystal clear, capturing the ambient murmur of a luxury hotel lounge.

*“Don't worry about the Vance family,”* Richard’s voice rang out from the speaker, distinct, arrogant, and unmistakably his. *“The old man is eighty years old and half-senile. Victoria thinks she’s a genius because she runs an interior design charity, but she can’t even balance a checkbook. By the time they realize Apex’s cash reserves have been gutted, the money will already be converted into bearer bonds in Singapore. I’m not spending the rest of my life being Robert Vance’s lapdog.”*

A second voice, sultry and feminine, chimed in on the recording: *“And Victoria? When are you going to serve her the divorce papers?”*

*“The second the Singapore accounts clear,”* Richard’s recorded voice replied with a callous laugh. *“She’s an insufferable, screeching nightmare. She thinks she owns me because of her last name. I wouldn't touch her with a ten-foot pole if she didn't have her father's social network.”*

The recording clicked off.

Silence. Absolute, suffocating, catastrophic silence.

The thirty high-society guests in the room looked as though they had just witnessed an open-heart surgery performed on the dining table. Nobody whispered. Nobody moved. Nobody even dared to breathe.

Victoria stood frozen. The red silk dress that had looked so commanding ten minutes ago now seemed to swallow her whole. The color completely drained from her lips. Her eyes moved slowly from the phone on the table up to Richard’s face.

“Victoria...” Richard croaked, his hands coming up in a desperate, pleading gesture. “Victoria, baby, listen to me. That was... that was AI. That was deepfake audio! Ethan generated that! You know how dangerous AI is now! You know I love you!”

“Who was that woman, Richard?” Victoria whispered. Her voice was terrifyingly calm, the calm of a hurricane’s eye before the wall hits.

“It’s nobody! It’s a lie!”

“The voice,” Ethan interjected smoothly, looking directly at his sister, “belongs to Chloe Montgomery. Your former roommate from Choate Rosemary Hall. And currently, the Vice President of Marketing at Apex Global, appointed by Richard twelve months ago.”