“Please,” Victoria says, clasping her hands to her chest. “I never wanted to hurt you; I didn’t want to lie. I thought I could persuade him to ease off on the debt. That’s why I agreed to see him at the games. But when we met, he told me how much he missed me, how it was killing him to be without me, and he meant it, Amara, I swear he meant it.” Victoria starts to cry. “I love him. You’ve always known I love him. It was too much not to see him anymore. I couldn’t bear it.”

Britannica returns to the room, quietly closing the door behind her. Amara barely notices. “How can you be such a fool?” she shouts at Victoria. “Felix doesn’t love you! He’s only using you to get back at me, and you’re stupid enough to fall for it. I cannot believe you let him into my house! How often has he been here? Was today the first time?” Victoria shakes her head, too choked by sobs to speak. “Which rooms has he seen?” Still Victoria doesn’t reply, and Amara grabs her by the shoulder. “Answer me!”

Victoria cringes from her. “He wanted to see all of the rooms. This is the second time he’s been.”

“So he knows the entire layout of my house.” Amara releases Victoria, pressing her hands to her own eyes, trying to take in the magnitude of the betrayal. “Tell me you didn’t let him go through the accounts.”

“No! Of course not!”

“Why ‘of course’? You’ve had him in my bedroom. You were fucking him in here, just moments ago.” The image rises up again in Amara’s mind, and with it, a rage so blinding there is no room for any other feeling. “You really are trash Victoria,” she says, her voice as cold as Felix at his cruelest. “No wonder your parents left you to die in the rubbish. It’s where you’ve always belonged.”