Caspian stood before his grandmother, the weight of his confession leaving him feeling hollowed out. He had given her the full, ugly truth. Now he awaited his sentence.
Eleanora, however, was no longer looking at him. Her gaze was distant, fixed on a strategic battlefield only she could see.
“A public accusation is clumsy,” she said, her voice sharp with purpose. “The video evidence, the financial records—that is your checkmate. But you do not open with checkmate, Caspian. You clear the board first.”
She rose from her chair and walked to the window, looking out over the manicured lawns that stretched into the darkness. “Isolde Finch thrives on one thing above all else: the adoration of our class. The sympathy, the charity galas, the fawning articles. That is her power base. And that is what we will dismantle first.”
Her strategy was as brutal as it was brilliant. Not a frontal assault, but a campaign of insidious whispers.
“We will make her a ghost at the feast,” Eleanora declared, a chilling resolve in her tone. “I will express my…concerns. To the right people. Worries about the tremendous strain this ordeal is putting on you. Questions about the opaque finances of `The Finch Foundation`. A quiet word here, a rescinded invitation there.”
She turned back from the window, her eyes alight with a cold fire he hadn’t seen in years. “She has built her entire identity on being the tragic heroine of high society. We will turn her into a pariah.”
Eleanora picked up her phone from the desk. She scrolled through her contacts, a list that represented a century of accumulated power and influence in the city. She stopped on a name, a notorious but impeccably connected society columnist.
She pressed the call button.
“Eleanor, darling,” she began, her voice instantly transformed, now laced with a masterful, understated worry. “I do hope I’m not disturbing you… No, no, I’m fine. It’s Caspian I’m worried about. He’s just wasting away, the poor boy… The stress of it all. And that foundation… one just hopes it’s all being managed properly, with everything else on her plate. It’s so difficult to keep track of these things.”
She listened for a moment, a faint, predatory smile touching her lips. “Of course. Thank you for your concern, darling. Goodnight.”
She hung up and placed the phone back on the desk with a soft click. The first shot had been fired. The first seed of doubt planted in the fertile soil of gossip.
She looked directly at Caspian, her expression now that of a general issuing orders.
“Your job is to continue your investigation with Dr. Ali. Secure your witness. Get me every piece of hard evidence you can find.”
Her voice dropped, sealing their new pact.
“My job is to ensure that by the time you expose Isolde Finch, she has no allies left to call.”
Caspian nodded, a sense of grim purpose settling over him. He had walked into this house a disgraced grandson, expecting to be cast out. He was leaving a soldier, a junior officer in a war now being commanded by its most ruthless general.
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