At the towering brass gates of Sterling Manor, one of the most exclusive coastal estates in Newport, a ragged, shivering vagrant stepped out of the ocean mist and raised a dirt-streaked hand.

"What do you mean, dismantle them yourself?" Arthur asked, pulling up a chair and sitting down, his legal instincts on high alert. "Julian, if these employees are involved in criminal embezzlement and violent assault, we need to follow protocol. You don't get your hands dirty with domestic staff."

"Protocol is what allowed them to thrive for three years," Julian countered, leaning back in his leather chair, his dark eyes fixed on the dramatic Manhattan skyline. "I want to know how deep the rot goes. And more importantly... I owe a debt to someone who works in that house."

Arthur raised an eyebrow. "A debt? To whom?"

"A maid named Elena Rostova," Julian said. Just speaking her name seemed to alter the temperature in the room. He remembered the feeling of her hand handing him the warm brioche through the iron bars, the fierce, protective flash of her turquoise eyes in the wine cellar when she defended her mother's honor. "She is the only person on that estate who isn't corrupt. In fact, she’s being systematically targeted and abused by Gable and Trent because she refuses to play their game."

Julian pulled a secondary file from his desk drawer and tossed it across to Arthur. "I ran a preliminary background check on her during my drive back to the city this morning. Tell me what you see."

Arthur opened the manila folder, scanning the printed documents. "Elena Rostova. Twenty-six. Graduated top of her class from Boston University with a degree in finance and economics. Why is an Ivy-league-level finance graduate scrubbing floors in a Newport mansion?"

"Keep reading," Julian instructed grimly.

"Two years ago, her father died of a sudden heart attack, leaving the family with massive medical debt," Arthur read aloud, his voice softening with realization. "Six months later, her mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. Elena liquidated her savings, gave up her junior analyst position at a Boston brokerage firm to move back to Rhode Island, and took the live-in domestic job at Sterling Manor because it offered immediate housing and cash flow to pay for her mother's specialized twenty-four-hour memory care facility in Providence."

Julian nodded slowly. "She sacrificed her entire future—her career, her ambition—to protect her mother. While I was firing junior executives for miscalculating decimals, she was enduring daily humiliation from my corrupt staff just to keep her mother from being dumped on the street."

He stood up, walking over to the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, his reflection overlapping the towering skyscrapers below.

"We are going to throw a party, Arthur," Julian announced, a cold, tactical brilliance lighting up his face. "A high-society charity gala at Sterling Manor this Saturday night. Invite the board of directors, invite the regional politicians, invite the entire Newport elite."

"A gala?" Arthur asked, confused. "Why host a massive event when you want to clean house?"

"Because," Julian said, turning around with a ruthless smirk, "predators get sloppy when they think there’s a massive distraction. When Mrs. Gable sees a three-hundred-person catering budget, she’ll try to skim fifty thousand dollars in a single weekend. When Marcus Trent sees eighty billionaires on the property, he’ll try to sell the security layouts to the highest bidder."