"You think this is my shame? Watch." Everly yanked the microphone off its stand and stepped into the light. "Miss Rose—" a maître d’ started, voice thin under the chandeliers. "This is the West family celebrating one of the biggest lies in Harbor City," Everly shouted. "You built yourself on other people's misery and called it legacy." "Everly, sit down," Joan Flowers said from the head table, her smile sharp enough to cut the room. "This is a private event." "Private for you. Public for the people you ruin." Everly shoved a chair so hard it scraped across the marble. Glass chimed somewhere. Cameras swivelled. Phones lifted. "Security!" someone barked. "Do you realize what you did?" Hazel Davenport clutched her pearls, eyes wide for the cameras that adored her. "Do you realize what you've done for them," Everly said to Joan, voice rising. "You wear pity like jewelry and call it charity." Cormac Ashford stood frozen beside his father, Edmund West. He had his hand on the back of a chair as if steadying the world. He did not move to stop her. "Everly!" Joan's tone went from polished to brittle. "You will apologize right now." "I won't apologize for naming you," Everly said. "You use children, donors, and cameras to launder your conscience. You put Hazel up as the perfect heiress while you broke people down to build Higher West." A reporter at the edge of the room clicked record. A flashbulb burst in