“What you call feelings are values. Ethics. I know you don’t have any. But I told you I didn’t want any part of your criminal enterprise. That’s why I quit. I was disgusted with you.”

“Too bad that Caroline didn’t feel the same way,” he said. “I think I was far closer to her than you ever were.”

I balled my hands into fists. There had always been something unseemly about the attention he’d paid to Caroline, as if he were the one courting her. “It was so satisfying to you, testing her loyalty, luring her to your team. Did you murder her? Was that to protect me as well?”

For the first time since I’d walked into his study, my father’s self-possession vanished. “You think I killed Caroline?”

“Juliet told Caroline about Mirelle, and Caroline told her sister. Were you afraid word would spread?”

“You can go to jail forever for all I care. I have Teddy now.”

“Did you kill Caroline?”

“No. I loved her,” he said quietly. “If you think I harmed her, you’re out of your mind.”

“I’d be mad to believe there was a person you wouldn’t hurt.”

He contemplated that. “Caroline was better than my own children. She was the kind of woman who thought before she made a move, considering the consequences not only to herself but to those around her. You and your sister always were a pair of ingrates, you especially. Juliet loves to embarrass me, and she argues over everything. You divorced yourself from this family. Everything I raised you for, everything I made you to be, you abandoned. Caroline was never like that. She was loyal.”

“Here’s what I think happened. Caroline was distraught to learn about Mirelle. She wanted answers, and when you talked to her, you told her I was responsible. But here’s where it gets tricky, Father. I think that dramatically changed her feelings about you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Her dear father-in-law had covered up an innocent woman’s murder,” I said. “Caroline couldn’t accept that. She couldn’t live with that. She must’ve looked at Teddy and wondered what way you would twist him. No wonder she wanted full custody of him. She needed to get him away from this house of monsters.”

He watched me impassively, but a muscle next to his eye quivered.

“You killed her,” I said. “You murdered Caroline.”

“Theo, you’re an idiot if you think that.”

“You’ve harmed so many people in your life. You’re a poison that seeps through our veins—mine, Juliet’s, Teddy’s. You have no conscience, no principles. To you, money is the only god. There’s no purpose to anything you do except to enrich yourself and hurt anyone who stands in your way. You murdered Caroline because she was going to expose you for the thieving fraud you are.”