“He told me he was handling the family’s assets so I could focus on the roadshow.”

I looked at the pale, innocent face of the little girl sleeping in my lap.

Lauren looked so much like Mary, but she had Ethan’s deep-set eyes.

To think that a group of men in expensive suits had decided her fate over a balance sheet made my stomach turn.

“They treated her like a bad debt,” I said, my voice trembling.

Ethan stopped pacing.

He looked at me, and for a moment, I saw the immense weight of his guilt in his eyes.

“I didn’t know, Evelyn,” he whispered.

“I swear to God, I didn’t know.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that Mary ended up in a freezing apartment because of it,” I said.

“It doesn’t change the fact that Carl Brenner threw this little girl out into the snow.”

Ethan’s phone buzzed in his hand, a sharp, angry vibration that cut through the silence.

He looked down at the screen.

The light from the display reflected in his eyes.

“It’s the email from Paul,” he said.