Chapter 35 · Video

"Mommy, why's your phone doing the buzzy thing?" Maya's got syrup on her chin and my phone face-up on the counter, lighting up like it's having a seizure.

I don't even get to answer. The screen fills with a text from a number I don't know. Just a link. Just three words under it: *Watch before it's scrubbed.*

My stomach drops before I even click it.

It's a press conference. Cade's press conference, from an hour ago, that nobody told me about. He's standing at a podium with the Vane Capital logo behind him, jaw set, voice flat and lethal the way it gets when he's already won something.

"I have a daughter," he says. "Her name is Maya. I intend to be part of her life, whatever it costs me."

Then the feed cuts — not to a photo op, not to a statement his PR team vetted. To footage. Grainy, low-angle, the corner of a ceiling I know. My ceiling.