Friday

The number, when Delphine finally saw it, didn't look real. Six figures had blurred into seven somewhere over the last three years — invoices to vendors that didn't exist, consulting fees paid to an account with Barrett's wife's maiden name on it.

"I was going to pay it back," Barrett said. It was the smallest she'd ever heard his voice. "The company had a bad two years. I didn't want the board to panic. I didn't want Mom to panic."

"She wasn't panicking," Corwin said. "She was building a trap."

"She was protecting the company," Delphine said. "Same as always. Just not the way you wanted her to."

Barrett put his head in his hands. Nobody moved to comfort him, and nobody moved to twist the knife either. It was Juno, of all people, who finally spoke.

"I don't want the house," she said.

Everyone looked up.

"I mean — I want it," she corrected. "I want to see it, I want to understand what she came from. But I'm not going to sit in it like a trophy while the rest of you are picking through wreckage." She turned to Corwin. "What's Friday?"

Corwin's jaw tightened. "Nothing you need to fix."

"How much," Juno said, and something in her flat, steady voice made him actually answer.

He told her. It wasn't the company's money. It wasn't even close to what Barrett had taken. It was smaller, uglier, personal — three years of bad bets he'd never told anyone about, a debt that had followed him out of two different states.

"I can cover that," Juno said quietly. "Not because I owe you anything. Because she would have wanted one of us to actually catch the other, for once."

Corwin didn't answer. He just nodded, once, and looked away so nobody would see his face.

Delphine's phone rang before anyone could say anything else. She didn't recognize the number. She almost let it go, then answered out of habit.

"Ms. Holbrook-Voss," a clipped voice said. "This is the Holbrook Group board office. We understand an independent audit has been triggered involving your brother. The board is convening an emergency session tonight. They're asking that Barrett be present — and that he bring his answer with him."

Delphine looked across the table at Barrett, who had gone very still, like a man listening for footsteps on stairs he already knew were coming.

"What answer," she said slowly, watching his face.

Barrett finally looked up. "They want to know if I'm resigning," he said, "or if I'm making them fire me in front of everyone."