Chapter 10
There had never been an affair.
There had been extortion.
Marcus was the one who finally used the word.
Not Dante.
Not an investigator.
Marcus.
He said it while sitting across from his brother with his attorney beside him and the financial timeline spread across the table.
“I blackmailed her.”
Dante did not move.
Marcus continued because stopping would only make it worse.
Seven months earlier, he discovered that Celeste had been submitting false household invoices against Ava’s trust.
He confronted her privately.
At first, he intended to force her to repay the money before Dante learned what happened.
That was the story Marcus told himself.
Then Celeste reminded him that Dante had blocked him from Harbor Point.
Marcus saw an opportunity.
He told her he would remain quiet if she helped him get access to the development.
She agreed.
It should have ended there.
It did not.
Once Marcus learned silence could purchase influence, he kept using it.
Internal pricing.
Introductions.
Meeting access.
Information about Dante’s negotiations.
Celeste became trapped by the original theft.
Marcus became trapped by his own appetite for leverage.
The private meetings in the residential wing were not romantic.
They were exchanges.
Arguments.
Demands.
Documents.
The first cufflink had genuinely fallen during one of those confrontations.
Celeste found it.
Later, when Marcus kept increasing his demands, she went into his office and took pieces from other sets.
She began leaving them near her bed.
Not because she wanted Dante to find them immediately.
Because she wanted insurance.
If Marcus ever exposed the financial fraud, Celeste planned to claim that he had pursued her sexually and then retaliated when she tried to end the relationship.
Multiple pieces of his jewelry in her bedroom would make the allegation look believable.
Ava found the evidence before Celeste was ready to use it.
That was why Celeste tried desperately to snatch the cufflink from her hand.
That was why Marcus panicked.
He recognized an old cufflink he did not remember losing there.
And that was why both of them were terrified when Dante asked what it meant.
Each believed the other might expose the secret first.
The clues had been there.
Marcus still wore a complete pair at dinner.
Several missing pieces came from sets stored in his office rather than recently worn.
Their messages were hostile, not intimate.
The trust theft started before Marcus’s involvement, then slowed once he discovered it.
Marcus benefited only after he had evidence against Celeste.
The relationship between them was real.
Just not the relationship everyone at the dinner table assumed.
Dante stared at his younger brother.
“You discovered someone stealing from Ava.”
Marcus nodded.
“And instead of protecting her, you monetized the secret.”
Marcus looked down.
“Yes.”
Dante turned toward Celeste’s written statement from her attorney.
She admitted creating the vendors.
She denied intending permanent loss.
The money, she claimed, was supposed to cover undisclosed liabilities from Bellrose until several commercial disputes were resolved.
She expected to restore it before anyone noticed.
Then Marcus noticed.
Her temporary theft became a permanent vulnerability.
Neither person had planned the entire disaster.
That made it more believable.
Celeste created the first wrong.
Marcus decided not to stop it because the wrong became useful.
Celeste then manufactured evidence to defend herself against the man exploiting her.
One betrayal fed the next.
Dante had spent ten days asking whether his wife and brother had betrayed him together.
The truth was worse.
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They had betrayed him separately.
And Ava had been the account both of them were willing to use while doing it.
