The garden went deathly still.

Even the birds seemed to quiet under the sheer weight of Declan’s fury. Victoria Hawthorne looked at her son, seeing for the first time in his life that the puppet strings she had manipulated since his childhood were severed completely.

Her thin lips tightened into a cruel, venomous line. She realized she had lost Declan. But Victoria was not a woman who surrendered without leaving a trail of destruction in her wake.

"You think you’re so clever, don't you, Declan?" Victoria whispered, her voice laced with pure, concentrated malice. "You think you’ve uncovered all the secrets? You think this little reunion is a fairy tale?"

She reached into her designer alligator-skin handbag and pulled out a thick, sealed manila envelope stamped with red wax from an international private investigative firm in Geneva.

She didn't hand it to Declan. Instead, she threw it onto the stone table directly in front of Cassidy. The heavy packet landed with a dull thud.

"What is that?" Declan demanded, his breathing heavy, his eyes locked on the envelope.

Victoria offered a sickening, triumphant smirk that sent a chill straight down Cassidy’s spine.

"That, my dear boy, is the real reason Cassidy left Manhattan five years ago," Victoria said coldly. "You thought she walked away because of my little interference? Ask your beloved ex-wife about the offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands. Ask her who funded her very first logistics warehouse in Savannah while she was supposedly 'starving' on bed rest."

Cassidy’s eyes widened slightly, her jaw clenching as her fingers twitched toward the envelope.

"And while you're reading those documents, Declan," Victoria added, turning slowly on her designer heels to face the gate, "take a very close look at the genetic sequence on page fourteen. Because the fertility clinic didn't just falsify records... and those three little girls might share Hawthorne blood, but you aren't the only Hawthorne brother who was visiting that penthouse five years ago."

Declan stopped breathing. "What did you say?"

Victoria didn't answer. She walked gracefully past her lawyers and through the iron gate, her bodyguard pulling it shut behind them with a definitive, metallic clang.

In the dead silence of the garden, Declan slowly turned his head to look at Cassidy.

Cassidy stood frozen beside the stone table, her face completely pale, her hand hovering over the sealed envelope, her chest heaving with silent, terrifying panic.

"Cassidy..." Declan whispered, his voice cracking as the foundation of his entire world began to crumble once more. "What is she talking about?"