a basic legal audit.

The old lawyer spoke clearly into the silence.

‘Miss Nari Su anticipated an unlawful attempt to divert her estate.

The trust provides that any such attempt triggers immediate disclosure of the evidence package stored with our firm, notification to the tax bureau, and a formal petition to reopen Madam Su’s criminal case.’

Color drained from Hayan’s face.

Hansang took one sharp step forward.

‘This is absurd.

My sister was ill.

She wasn’t in her right mind.’

The lawyer turned to her without blinking.

‘Your sister amended the documents three times and left video authentication with a full competency assessment.

She was very much in her right mind.’

Neil pressed a remote.

The ballroom screens, prepared for the evening’s ceremonial presentation of Lin Maja as the new lady of the Su family, flickered to life.

The image that appeared was not a title slide or family montage.

It was grainy pantry footage with a timestamp from five years earlier.

Lin Maja stood alone by the tea service, glancing over her shoulder.

She opened a vial, emptied crushed tablets into one cup, stirred, then switched the cups on the tray.

A second clip followed.

Su Hayan entered the pantry, adjusted her sleeve, and said in a voice clear enough to chill the room, ‘Once she is convicted, everything settles.

Do not overact.

Let the girls do the crying.’

A third clip appeared: Hansang inside the security room deleting camera files while talking on the phone.

‘I’ve handled the backup,’ she said.

‘There is no path back for her now.’

The fourth clip was worse.

Jene was in tears, asking Hayan if this was truly necessary.

He answered, ‘If your stepmother stays, your real mother stays a servant.

Decide what family means.’ Zeun, medicated and shaking, sat on a sofa nearby while Lin Maja rubbed her shoulder and whispered that Madam Su had always judged her and wanted her institutionalized.

It was coaching.

It was pressure.

It was all there, preserved and undeniable.

The ballroom erupted.

Some guests gasped.

Some backed away from the Su family as if scandal itself could stain fabric.

Board members began checking their phones at once, calculating markets and headlines.

Lin Maja made a choking sound and reached for Hayan’s arm, but he pulled away from her as if he had never touched her willingly in his life.

‘Fake,’ Lin Maja said.

‘It’s edited.

It’s revenge.’

The forensic expert spoke before Madam Su had to.

The evidence had been mirrored to offsite servers by Nari the night of the banquet, hashed, certified, and revalidated that afternoon.

There was no editing.

No manipulation.

No escape route through technical doubt.

Hansang was the first daughter to crack, though in a way that still sounded like strategy.

‘Father said it would only be temporary,’ she said, voice rising.

‘He said prison would break the scandal, that afterward we could reverse it quietly.

He said Mother’ — she looked toward Lin Maja and then stopped, suddenly aware of what the word revealed — ‘he said she deserved the position more than a woman who never gave him peace.’

Jene began sobbing in earnest.

‘I lied because I was afraid,’ she said.

‘He told us Zeun would lose treatment and the company would collapse and we’d all be ruined.