At 8:17 on Christmas Eve, my husband kicked me in front of seventy-three dinner guests while I was thirty weeks pregnant. His mistress stood beside our grand staircase holding a champagne glass, and instead of looking shocked, she smiled as if she had just won. But while I was on the marble floor protecting my stomach, I remembered something Preston had apparently forgotten: the carved wooden angel above our fireplace had once contained a hidden camera.

The transfer holding room in the basement of the Wickford Barracks was divided by a two-inch-thick sheet of reinforced security glass. It smelled of damp concrete, floor wax, and the metallic tang of old radiator heat.

Preston sat on the far side of the glass, his wrists chained to a waist belt, his orange jumpsuit illuminated by a single flickering fluorescent tube overhead.

When I sat down on the metal stool on my side of the partition, accompanied by Nathan and Trooper Miller, Preston lunged forward against the steel shelf. The chains rattled violently.

"Grace," he gasped, his voice cracking, his eyes wild and desperate. He pressed both of his cuffed hands against the glass, leaving smudges of cold sweat on the surface. "Grace, look at me. Look at what they’re doing to me."

I didn't speak. I sat with my hands folded over my belly, feeling the gentle, rhythmic kick of my daughter against my ribs. I looked at the man who had kicked me into a marble floor fourteen hours ago. Without the custom suits, without the seventy-three fawning guests, without his father's bank accounts, he looked small. He looked like an empty shell that had made a loud noise in the world only because other people had allowed it.

"You have to tell them it was an accident, Grace," Preston pleaded, tears finally spilling from his bloodshot eyes—the desperate, theatrical tears of a narcissist who had run out of exits. "Tell Alvarez you had an argument and you lost your balance. I’ll give you the divorce. I’ll give you three million dollars cash. I’ll let you keep the cottage in Narragansett. You can raise the baby wherever you want. Just tell them to drop the felony charges. If I go to Cranston, Grace... the unions out there... the men from the docks... they’ll kill me."

"You kicked me, Preston," I said, my voice carrying through the small brass intercom grille with a quiet, devastating clarity.

"I lost my temper!" he cried out. "It was the stress! The bank was calling the notes on the western slips! Sienna was threatening to go to the federal auditors if I didn't give her the partnership shares! I was drowning, Grace! You know how much pressure I was under!"

"You asked Dr. Keller how to cause an abruption," I said, leaning forward until my face was six inches from the glass. "You asked him if blunt trauma could end the pregnancy without leaving external marks. You didn't lose your temper, Preston. You planned it."

Preston’s mouth opened, then snapped shut. The frantic, pleading expression on his face hardened, just for a second, into that familiar, venomous hatred.

"You think you’ve won?" he whispered, his voice dropping into a vicious, ragged hiss through the grille. "You think you and your broken-down mechanic brothers can run my family’s companies? You’re an art history major who couldn't even balance our personal checking account without my assistant! You’ll lose the marina in six months! The board will eat you alive!"

"The board was dissolved at ten this morning, Preston," I replied, my voice steady, calm, and absolute. "Arthur Vance executed the emergency governance clauses under your father’s trust. Nathan has already been appointed interim managing director of the maritime division. He holds an advanced degree in naval architecture from MIT, Preston. The degree you told everyone at the country club he was 'too working-class' to finish."

Preston flinched as if I had struck him with a leather strap.

"And the wooden angel above our fireplace?" I added, tilting my head slightly. "The one you told me wasn't connected?"

Preston closed his eyes, a low, broken moan escaping his throat.

"My father built that lens, Preston," I said. "He built it because he knew that sooner or later, a man who lives by lies will always forget where the light comes from. You thought you left me with nothing. But my father left me with everything I needed to destroy you."

I stood up from the stool, smoothing the front of my wool blanket.

"Grace! Wait! Don't leave me here! Grace!" Preston screamed, throwing his body against the glass with a concussive thud that rattled the partition frame.

Trooper Miller stepped forward, opening the door behind me.