The signed affidavit lay centered on the polished mahogany of the library desk, its crisp pages a testament to their first real victory. The Sworn Affidavit of Maria. Caspian Hawthorne stared at it, a knot of tension in his shoulders finally beginning to ease.
“This is it,” Zara Ali said, her voice tight with a mixture of relief and fury. “We leak this. We give it to a real journalist, and it’s over. Her entire story collapses.”
Caspian nodded, tracing the edge of the document. “A single press conference. We let Maria’s words detonate in the middle of her saintly narrative.” For the first time in months, he felt a flicker of something other than shame. He felt the cold, sharp edge of the offensive.
“A paper sword.”
The voice, cool and cutting, sliced through their optimism. Eleanora Hawthorne stood in the doorway, her posture as unyielding as the oak frame. She moved into the room, the scent of old books and quiet power following her.
She stopped at the desk but didn’t look at the affidavit. Her eyes were fixed on her grandson. “You think this is a weapon? This is testimony. This is one woman’s word against another’s.”
“It’s a sworn statement,” Caspian countered, his frustration rising. “It’s proof.”
“It’s an allegation,” Eleanora corrected him, her tone merciless. “Isolde will paint Maria as a disgruntled employee, a liar paid off by the jealous ex-husband. She will cry on national television and the world will cry with her. You are planning a skirmish. Isolde wages wars.”
Zara’s face hardened. “So we do nothing? We let her win?”
“No,” Eleanora said. “We do not fight her on her battlefield. Emotion, sympathy, words—that is her territory. We must find a battlefield where she cannot follow.”
She finally looked down at the document, her expression dismissive. “This is not the weapon that ends the war. It is the story that will be told after the war is won. We need something that cannot be argued with. Something impersonal. Absolute.”
A silence settled over the room, heavy and suffocating. Eleanora was right. The thought of Isolde twisting Maria’s pain into another tool for her own victimhood was sickening.
Caspian’s mind raced, his guilt over what he’d put Lyra through a constant, burning fuel. He had to end this. Not just expose the lie, but eradicate it.
Impersonal. Absolute.
The thought struck him with the force of a physical blow. Isolde’s greatest strength was her public image. The tireless philanthropist. The brave face of The Finch Foundation.
Her greatest strength. And therefore, her greatest vulnerability.
“The foundation,” Caspian said, his voice low and hard. “The Finch Foundation.”
Zara and Eleanora both looked at him.
“We don’t attack the woman,” he continued, a cold clarity settling over him. “We attack her work. We investigate her charity.” The mission snapped into focus. This was no longer about exposing a cruel deception.
It was about finding proof of a crime.
About the Author
