Chapter 16
Chapter 16: The Deposition
The conference room on the thirty-fourth floor of the Manhattan high-rise smelled of expensive leather and ozone from the copy machines. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city looked small, like an architectural model built for people who didn't have to live in it.
Arthur Vance sat at the end of the mahogany table. He had silver hair, a custom-tailored navy suit, and a smile that looked like it had been bought at the same place as Evelyn’s diamonds.
"Let’s keep this professional, shall we?" Vance said, his voice a smooth baritone. "We’re all adults here. A young family has suffered a tragic misunderstanding. My client is deeply remorseful for the tension of Easter afternoon, but an isolated incident of marital discord does not constitute a pattern of unfitness."
Henry sat next to Sophia. He wasn't wearing his flannel today. He wore the black suit he had bought for Elise’s funeral—the only one that still fit his shoulders. He didn't look at Vance. He looked at Nathan, who sat across from them.
Nathan looked different. The gray suit was gone, replaced by a softer charcoal wool. He wasn't smiling his cruel smile anymore; he looked tired, his eyes slightly downcast, the perfect picture of a grieving young father whose wife had been stolen by a radicalized parent.
"Sophia," Nathan said, leaning forward. His voice had the old warmth—the texture that had made her feel safe before she learned the weight of his hands. "Just look at me. Please. We don't have to do this. Clara needs her home. The nursery is still exactly how you left it."
Sophia didn't look away. She stared directly into his eyes, her fingers locked around the locket beneath her collar.
"The nursery has a camera in the smoke detector, Nathan," she said. Her voice was loud enough to trigger the court reporter’s machine. Clack-clack-clack. "I found it three weeks before I left. You didn't want a family. You wanted a gallery."
Vance didn't blink. He tapped his gold pen against a legal pad. "Mrs. Whitmore—"
"Callahan," she corrected.
"The record will reflect the legal name," Vance said smoothly. "We have statements from fourteen guests at the Easter dinner stating they saw no violence. We have the report from Dr. Hanes indicating your injuries were consistent with a fall on the marble stairs. And we have the logs from your father’s phone—showing forty-two calls to a federal officer before the alleged assault took place. It looks less like a rescue, Ms. Callahan, and more like a targeted extraction of corporate intelligence."
Henry leaned his forearms against the table. The wood was cold under his skin.
"Mr. Vance," Henry said. The room went very quiet. The court reporter’s hands hovered over the keys. "You’ve spent forty years defending men who hit women because their fathers paid you to. But you’ve never sat across from a man who knows exactly how much your firm spends on offshore accounts in the Caymans to keep those fathers out of prison."
Vance’s smile didn't vanish, but his thumb stopped toggling the gold pen. "Are you threatening me, Colonel?"
"I’m logistically updating you," Henry whispered. "The recording Sophia made isn't the only file Mara Voss took from that house. We didn't just take the blue folder. We took the server."
Nathan’s face went white. Not purple-red like it had on the lawn, but the dull, greasy gray of a man who realizes the floor beneath him isn't marble—it’s ice.
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"You don't have the encryption keys," Nathan hissed, forgetting his humble father act.
Sophia leaned forward, her eyes locked on his. "No. But Mom did. She wrote them in the margins of a Betty Crocker cookbook she left me when I was twelve. Turns out, Nathan, she knew your father long before I knew you."
