Miranda turned on her son, her face contorted with anger.

“How dare you side with them?” she hissed.

“I built this empire for you.”

“I protected your inheritance from these vultures.”

“Did you protect it, or did you steal it?” Julian asked.

The question hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.

Miranda seemed to shrink slightly under her son’s gaze.

“You don’t understand how business is done, Julian,” she whispered.

“Sometimes difficult choices have to be made to secure the future.”

“Forging a signature is not a difficult choice, Miranda,” Elias said.

“It is a crime.”

“And it is a crime that is about to be exposed to every bank in this city.”

Miranda straightened her shoulders, trying to regain her imposing stature.

“You have no proof that will hold up in a real court,” she said.

“These papers prove nothing without the original bank ledgers from the main vault.”

“And those ledgers are locked away where none of you can ever reach them,” she added.

She smiled then, a cold, triumphant smirk.

“You forgot that I control the vault, Nathaniel,” she said.