Everyone looked at me.

My father turned his gaze toward me, his eyes filled with a deep, silent regret.

“You spent months trying to make us look like the unstable ones, Patricia,” I said.

“You told my father that Martina was stealing from the estate accounts.”

“You told him I was leaking company secrets to his competitors.”

“But you were the one sending the emails.”

Patricia laughed, a dry, bitter sound that echoed off the cold glass of the chandelier above us.

“You are a child, Daniela,” she said.

“You have no idea how the world works.”

“Your father was going to lose everything anyway.”

“I was securing his future.”

“Our future.”

My father walked down three steps, his movements slow and deliberate.

The light from the chandelier caught the silver threads in his hair.

“With wire fraud, Patricia?” my father asked.

“With a systematic attempt to extort my business partners?”

“By trying to put my own daughters in prison?”

He stopped on the landing, about ten feet above her.

“I gave you everything,” he said.

“I opened my home to you.”