My God, Nora. Thank you for lending me your mother’s necklace.”

The Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago was a grim, triangular concrete monolith rising twenty-seven stories above the intersection of Clark and Van Buren.

On Wednesday morning, Arthur Vance and I sat in a glass-enclosed attorney-client visiting room on the ninth floor.

Across the stainless-steel table sat Sloane Avery.

She was unrecognizable from the polished, radiant woman who had mocked me under the chandeliers of the Drake Hotel a week ago. She wore a loose, coarse orange jumpsuit. Her dark hair was pulled into a limp ponytail; she wore no makeup, and the skin beneath her eyes was dark and bruised from sleeplessness. Her hands were cuffed to a chain around her waist.

Beside her sat a public defender—a young, overworked attorney named Miller, who looked like he hadn't slept in forty-eight hours.

"Mrs. Mercer," the public defender began nervously. "My client requested this meeting under the terms of a preliminary proffer discussion. She is prepared to provide full cooperation regarding Grant Mercer’s financial architecture in exchange for a favorable sentencing recommendation from the United States Attorney."

I looked at Sloane.

She wouldn't meet my eyes. She stared at the stainless-steel surface of the table, her shoulders hunched, her breathing shallow and trembling.

"You don't have anything to offer, Sloane," I said, my voice flat and conversational. "I already have Grant’s handwritten ledger. I have Donna Miller’s sworn affidavit. I have the digital backups from my mother’s auditor. And the federal government froze the Nevis accounts at midnight on Monday. You have zero leverage."

Sloane’s head snapped up, her green eyes wide and wild with desperate terror. "That's not all of it, Nora! You don't know about Zurich!"

Arthur Vance leaned forward, his pen hovering above his legal pad. "Explain."

"Grant opened an account at Bank Vontobel in Zurich eighteen months ago," Sloane said, words tumbling out of her mouth in a frantic, breathless rush. "Under an Austrian foundation called *Stiftung Adler*. He didn't just skim four point eight million from Apex. For three years, he’s been taking two percent kickbacks on every municipal concrete subcontract Mercer Development awarded in Cook County!"

Arthur and I exchanged a sharp glance.

"How much is in Zurich, Sloane?" Arthur asked.

"Six point seven million dollars," she whispered, tears spilling over her eyelashes. "He told me that was our real retirement fund. He told me the Nevis money was just to fund the initial flight and purchase the island property, but the Zurich account was where he kept the real cash. I have the account number. I have the transfer routing logs. He made me memorize the wire passphrases because he was paranoid about writing them down!"

"Why are you telling us this?" I asked.

Sloane let out a ragged, bitter sob, looking at her cuffed wrists. "Because this morning, my lawyer showed me the formal response Grant’s defense team filed with the magistrate."

She looked at me, her face contorted with pure, burning hatred.

"He’s blaming me for everything, Nora. His lawyers claim I seduced him, that I used my position as VP to falsify corporate records without his knowledge, that I forged his signatures on the Blue Harbor documents, and that he was completely unaware of the wire transfers to Nevis until the morning of his arrest."

A cold, familiar irony settled over the room.

"He tried to do to you exactly what he tried to do to me," I said quietly.

"Yes!" she wept, leaning across the table as far as the belly chain would allow. "He’s a monster! He uses women until they’re dry, and then he throws them under the bus to save his own miserable skin! I know what I did to you was unforgivable. I know I wore your mother’s necklace to humiliate you... I was stupid. I was so jealous of you, Nora. You had everything—the family, the wealth, the respect, the brilliance. Grant made me believe I was better than you. He made me believe I was taking what was rightfully mine."

"And now you know," I said.

"Please," Sloane begged, her voice cracking into a ragged whisper. "Give me the proffer, Nora. If you tell the US Attorney that my testimony helped recover the six point seven million in Zurich, they’ll drop the aggravated identity theft charges. I won't have to serve the mandatory minimum. I can get out in three years instead of fifteen. I’ll spend the rest of my life paying you back. Just don't let him walk away while I rot in a cell."

I stood up from the stainless-steel table, smoothing the front of my tailored coat.

"I won't advocate for your release, Sloane," I said, looking down at her with cold, unyielding clarity. "You made your choices. You walked into that ballroom wearing a dead woman’s diamonds to twist a knife into a mourning daughter’s heart. You deserve every day you spend inside these walls."

Sloane’s face collapsed into despair.

"However," I added, pausing at the heavy steel door of the visiting room, "I will ensure the US Attorney receives your documentation regarding the Zurich accounts. Not to save you. But to make sure Grant Mercer never sees the light of day again."

I knocked on the glass, and the guard buzzed the lock open.

As Arthur and I walked down the sterile concrete corridor toward the elevators, Arthur turned to me with a look of profound satisfaction.

"With the Zurich funds and the recovered Nevis wires," Arthur said, calculating rapidly in his head, "Mercer Development will not only recover every dollar stolen, but your liquidity position will be stronger than it was before your mother fell ill."

"Good," I said, pressing the button for the ground floor. "Because next week, we’re breaking ground on the West Side."

"The affordable housing initiative Elizabeth planned?"

"The Elizabeth Mercer Community Campus," I corrected, a deep, warm pride swelling in my chest. "Twenty-two acres of sustainable housing, green spaces, and a free children’s health clinic. Built on the land Grant tried to sell to Apex Logistics."

Arthur smiled warmly. "Your mother would have loved that."