Part 3Thirty Years of Ash

Douglas Reyner called almost before I'd sat down.

"Daphne, the board is unanimous. We do not support this.

"The Aldriches have roots all through this city, both of them hold power, and Camille is the thing they love most in the world.

"You place an unlimited bid on that girl's photographs today, and this company is finished by tomorrow."

I ran a thumb along the edge of the phone.

"I'm not the one who took the pictures. If you want someone to blame, blame whoever did.

"Bidding is how an auction works. On what grounds am I not allowed to bid?"

When it was clear I wouldn't move, his breathing got heavy.

"What do you actually get out of grinding this down?

"Camille's barely into her twenties. Why go after an innocent kid like this?"

The laugh came out of me before I could stop it, hatred rolling up through my chest.

Camille was not innocent. Not by any measure.

And her parents, Sebastian and Lenora Aldrich, deserved worse than anything I could name.

When nothing landed, Douglas played his last card.

"If you do anything today that damages this company, we'll remove you from the board and strip every title you hold."

I hung up and went back to my seat.

At some point a meticulously made-up woman in middle age had taken the chair beside me.

She carried the official's arrogance that comes from decades near the top, and it filled the space around her.

I had known that face for forty years. I had hated it for exactly as long.

She glanced at me and spoke with the ease of someone holding all the cards.

"Ms. Sutter. We're both women. Why stoop to a catfight?

"Somebody set my daughter up and photographed her. She's done nothing.

"I've lived my whole life in the open. I can't think of a soul I've wronged, and I truly cannot understand why you'd press this hard, or why you'd fix on my daughter of all people."

She raised her paddle without hurry.

"One million one hundred thousand."

Then she turned to me with a smile that stopped at her mouth.

"I admire you. Building all this with nothing behind you.

"I'd hate to watch you destroy it out of envy."

She made it sound like nothing at all.

And my mind went where I couldn't stop it going, to my sister's face.

Her cheeks laid open with scratches, her body worn down to almost nothing.

The lab had matched skin cells from her wounds to Lenora. It was in the report.

She still walked out of that police station without a mark on her, on the strength of who she knew.

She never paid a dollar in compensation.

I lifted my paddle, unhurried, and my voice carried.

"One million one hundred ten thousand."

I turned my head toward Lenora and let the mockery show.

"You can put the word catfight away.

"How many innocent girls have you wrecked without breaking stride?"

Lenora's face went stiff.

Her voice dropped into something savage.

"Who the hell are you?"

I held her eyes and found nothing in them.

Too many bad deeds, too many faces. My sister and I were half alike, and she still didn't see it.

The mockery stayed on my mouth.

"You tell me."

Two seconds, and Lenora had herself back.

Contempt returned, and dismissal with it.

"I've seen plenty of people like you come in here to make a scene.

"No evidence, so you're just a clown on a stage.

"They all end the same way, back in front of me, begging."

She'd clearly buried a lot of desperate people over the years.

I smiled, neither cowed nor loud.

"We'll see who's laughing at the end of it."

The bidding climbed round after round. Lenora raised through her teeth, and her face got worse each time.

The liquid money she could reach was nowhere near mine.

After a few exchanges, the ground under her started to go.

It had never occurred to her that a businesswoman would keep going regardless of cost.

A few more rounds, and Nathaniel Voss brought down the hammer.

"One million five hundred ten thousand. Sold to Ms. Daphne Sutter."

Camille had gone white, her eyes full of poison.

Lenora's face was no better, but there was something else in it. Something considering.

The moment I walked out of that auction house, Lenora made her move.