Victoria: What is that paper?! You have no right to open my private mail!
Gabriel: This isn't your mail, Victoria. This was in my study safe behind Clara’s oil portrait.
Victoria: I don't know the combination to that safe! You kept the dial locked!
Gabriel: You didn't need the combination. You paid my estate notary fifty thousand dollars to crack it.
Victoria: That’s a disgusting lie! I never paid anyone to touch your personal files!
Gabriel: Thomas Miller gave a full sworn statement to the district attorney three hours ago.
Victoria: Thomas Miller is a lying drunkard who was stealing from your company escrow accounts!
Gabriel: He handed over your text messages, Victoria. And the bank wire receipts from your offshore account.
Elena wiped a stray drop of bathwater from Oliver’s cheek as the paramedic fitted a tiny oxygen mask.
Elena: She asked him how long an infant could stay underwater without leaving brain marks, Mr. Vance.
Gabriel’s breath caught in his throat, his chest burning with unbearable agony.
Gabriel: Did you ask him that, Victoria?
Victoria: It was research for a charity novel! I was writing a screenplay about a hospital rescue!
Gabriel: A screenplay?! You were writing a death sentence for my four-month-old boy!
Victoria: You can’t prove intent! No judge will convict a high-society woman on text messages!
Gabriel: Read page four of this probate audit, Victoria.
Gabriel unfolded the document, holding the stamped parchment inches from her eyes.
Gabriel: 'Investigation into the sudden cardiac arrest of Clara Vance, age twenty-eight'...
Victoria flinched backward, her eyes darting frantically toward the open door.
Victoria: Clara had an undetected heart defect! The coroner signed the death certificate!
Gabriel: The coroner was paid three hundred thousand dollars by your father’s shell company in Panama.
Victoria: That was an independent consulting fee for our maritime medical clinic!
Gabriel: The medical examiner exhumed Clara’s tissue samples yesterday morning, Victoria.
The entire bathroom went dead silent, the only sound being Oliver’s steady breathing on oxygen.
Victoria: You... You exhumed Clara’s body?!
Gabriel: They found lethal levels of potassium chloride in her bloodstream.
Elena: Dear God in heaven... You poisoned Mrs. Clara while she was recovering from childbirth!
Victoria: I didn't give her anything! I brought her herbal tea from the kitchen because she was tired!
Gabriel: Herbal tea laced with an un-traceable hospital paralytic.
Victoria: My father gave me that tea! He said it was an organic sleep aid from Switzerland!
Gabriel: Your father gave the police every single email between you two at dawn today.
Victoria’s jaw fell slack, her body trembling so violently that her knees buckled completely.
Victoria: My father... gave them my emails?!
Gabriel: He took a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty, Victoria. He traded your life for his.
Victoria: That coward! That selfish old bastard! He swore he would protect me until the end!
Elena: There is no honor among murderers, Victoria.
Gabriel: You killed my wife, and then you walked into this house pretending to love my son.
Victoria: I did love you, Gabriel! I wanted us to run the shipping empire together!
Gabriel: You loved eighty million dollars in logistics equity.
Victoria: We can settle this without the courts! I’ll sign a full confession and leave the country!
Gabriel: You aren't leaving the country, Victoria. You’re spending thirty years in a state penitentiary.
Officer Davis pulled her to her feet, his grip like iron around her upper arms.
Officer Davis: Watch your step, ma'am. We’re heading down to the transport vehicle.
Victoria: Gabriel, look at me! You can’t raise that boy alone without a mother!
Gabriel: My boy will be raised by people who love him. Not a monster who drowns babies in bathtubs.