**Chapter 53- Lana POV**
My apartment was still a mess.
I hadn't fully cleaned it since the scandal. A few of the bigger pieces of broken glass were gone - I'd stepped on one at 2am and bled on the carpet which motivated me enough to sweep - but the general atmosphere of destruction remained. Crooked painting. Empty shelf. Chair still not quite back in its place.
I was sitting on the floor with my back against the sofa when my doorbell rang.
I wasn't expecting anyone.
I opened it.
Liam.
He looked destroyed. Shirt untucked, jaw tight, eyes carrying something hollow and dangerous simultaneously. No explanation. Just standing there.
I stepped aside and let him in without a word.
He walked to my sofa and sat down heavily like his legs had been deciding whether to keep working and had finally voted no. I closed the door and looked at him.
"Sharon found out," he said.
"I figured."
I went to the kitchen and made him a coffee he didn't ask for because I needed something to do with my hands. I set it in front of him. He didn't touch it.
We sat in silence for a few minutes - the particular silence of two people who had known each other long enough to not need to fill every space with words.
Then my phone rang.
Sharon.
I looked at Liam. He looked at me.
I answered.
"Hey. You okay? You sound-"
"He cheated on me."
I kept my face completely neutral. Across the room Liam had gone very still, his coffee cup halfway to his mouth, frozen there.
"Liam," Sharon said. "He's been cheating on me. With Madeleine. The secretary. I walked in on them tonight Lana. I saw everything."
I said nothing for a moment. Just let her talk.
"The ring," she said, her voice cracking slightly. "He bought a ring at Celeste. I saw him through the window and I thought it was for me. I stood there smiling like an idiot thinking my husband was buying me a surprise and it was for *her.* The blue diamond flower ring. It's on her finger Lana. On her finger."
I closed my eyes briefly.
"Sharon," I said carefully. "Where are you now?"
"Home. I don't even know what to call it anymore."
"Are you alone?"
"Yes."
Across the room, Liam set his cup down very slowly. His jaw was working. His eyes were fixed on the floor.
"I'm going to destroy him," Sharon said. Simply. Quietly. The way someone said something they had already decided. "Both of them. I'm done Lana. Completely done."
"I know," I said. "I know you are."
We stayed on the phone a few more minutes. Eventually she said she needed to sleep. I told her to call me in the morning.
The call ended.
Silence fell over the apartment.
Liam hadn't moved. He was still staring at the floor, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together. The coffee untouched. His face was doing something complicated and painful that I didn't entirely have words for.
He had heard everything.
Every word Sharon had said.
The ring. The *it's on her finger.* The *I'm completely done.*
I looked at him for a long moment.
Then I said: "Are you ready to stop feeling sorry for yourself and actually do something about the person who caused all of this?"
Liam looked up slowly.
"Scarlett," I said.
Something shifted in his eyes. The hollowness hardened into something else entirely.
"She set this up," I said. "The message. The key. The timing. All of it was her. She destroyed my career. Now she's destroyed your marriage. She is not going to stop Liam. Not until we stop her first."
Liam was quiet for a long moment.
Then he said: "Madeleine told me something. The night Marc attacked her - two women were there. Helped her. She described them." He looked at me. "Long black hair. Dark eyes. And another one - shorter, brown hair, hazel eyes."
I frowned slowly.
Something pulled at the back of my mind.
Long black hair. Dark eyes.
"Liam," I said carefully.
"I know how it sounds-"
"That sounds exactly like Letty." I sat up straighter. "Jason's girlfriend. Your secretary."
The silence that followed had weight to it.
"She appeared from nowhere," I continued, thinking out loud now. "She knew everything about Best Auto at the interview - too much. Sharon said she walked straight to the bathroom at dinner without being shown where it was." I looked at him. "And she matches Madeleine's description perfectly."
Liam stared at me. "That can't be-"
"Can't it?" I held his gaze. "Or have we been too close to see it the whole time?"
The name hung between us.
Letty.
I turned it over slowly in my mind. Looked at it from every angle.
And then something else surfaced. Something older. A face from ten years ago - rounder then, softer, afraid. Black hair. Black eyes.
My blood went cold.
"Liam," I said slowly. "What if Letty isn't just involved with Scarlett?"
He looked at me.
"What if Letty *is* Scarlett?"
The apartment went completely silent.
Liam's face changed through about six different expressions in four seconds.
Then he stood up.
"Jason," he said, his voice dangerously quiet. "Jason has been with her this whole time. In our office. In our house. At our dinner table." His hands balled into fists at his sides. "She's been inside our lives the whole time and we didn't see it."
"We see it now," I said quietly.
Liam picked up his phone. Stared at it. Put it back down.
"She's going to pay for this," he said. "Everything. All of it. She is going to pay."
I looked at him.
And for the first time since the scandal broke - since my career collapsed and my father walked out and the lawyers started calling - I felt something familiar move through me.
Not fear. Not shame.
Purpose.
"Yes," I said simply.
"She is."