“Your house?” I asked again, quieter this time.
Vanessa’s chin lifted, but her hand tightened around the champagne glass hard enough that her knuckles went white.
“I’m your wife, Nathan. What’s yours is mine.”
“Funny,” I said. “Because the deed to this house is still in Claire’s name. I never changed it. Claire’s estate owns this mansion. Which means, legally, you’ve been hosting parties in a house that belongs to four little girls you’ve been starving.”
The color drained from her face so fast I almost felt sorry for her.
Almost.
“You’re exaggerating,” she said, forcing a laugh that no longer landed. “Kids are picky eaters. I was helping them build discipline.”
“With mold?” My voice stayed level, but something in it made the last few stragglers near the door freeze mid-step. “With ice water in a house with six working fireplaces?”
I pulled out my phone and set it on the table between us.
“I called my assistant on the way down here,” I said. “Do you know what she told me? The nanny fund — the one I wire forty thousand dollars into every month — hasn’t paid a single nanny in five months.”
Vanessa’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.
“So I asked her where the money went instead,” I continued. “She sent me the account records ten minutes ago.”
I turned the phone screen toward her.
A spreadsheet. Transfers. Dates going back five months, each one matching almost exactly to the day my daughters’ nannies had apparently vanished. Boutiques. A private jewelry consultant. A deposit on a beach property in her sister’s name.
Diamonds, while my daughters ate mold.
“You didn’t fire the nannies,” I said. “You never hired new ones. You kept collecting the salary and told my assistant everything was handled. For five months, my daughters have been alone in this house with a woman who locks their dining room and calls starving them discipline.”
“Nathan—”
“There’s a locked room down that hallway,” I said, cutting her off. “The one you told the staff never to open. I haven’t gotten there yet.”
Vanessa’s composure finally cracked completely.
“Don’t,” she said, and for the first time that night, her voice wasn’t performing for anyone. “Nathan, please, let me explain before you—”
But I was already walking.
The remaining guests parted around me like water, coats half-buttoned, eyes down, desperate not to be witnesses to whatever came next. Vanessa’s heels clicked frantically behind me down the marble hallway, past Claire’s gold stars, past the dining room where my daughters still sat huddled together, watching the hallway with wide, frightened eyes.
The locked door was at the very end.
Small. Unremarkable. The kind of door you’d walk past a hundred times without noticing, except for the brand-new deadbolt gleaming against old wood — the only new hardware in an otherwise untouched hallway.
“Nathan, wait—”
I didn’t wait.
I put my shoulder against the door.
And when it finally gave way, what I found inside wasn’t what I expected at all.
It was worse.
TO BE CONTINUED…