Page 86 of Mane Rival in Store by Milly Taiden

Across the table: Fallon Creed.

He looked the same. That was the worst part—the sameness of him. The slicked hair, the sharp jaw, the suit that cost more than most people’s cars. He sat with the manufactured ease of a man who had never entered a room without calculating his exit, flanked by his own legal team: three attorneys from Calloway Raines, a corporate firm that specialized in making problems disappear.

Fallon’s eyes found Lark’s across the mahogany. The smile appeared—the one she remembered from three years ago, the one that could warm a room or freeze a bank account depending on which direction the money was flowing. He wore it like a costume.

“Lark.” His voice carried the careful warmth of a man who had practiced saying her name in the mirror. “I’m glad we could sit down.”

He’s glad we could sit down. Months of sabotage, a building acquisition, a counterfeiting ring, and a lion mercenary, and he’s glad we could sit down.

“Mr. Creed.” Margaux opened a folder. She did not return the smile. “We’re here to present evidence of criminal conspiracy, commercial fraud, and coordinated corporate sabotage targeting Sterling & Mane International and Villainette, LLC. My clients intend to pursue both civil litigation and criminal referral. This meeting is a courtesy. The evidence speaks for itself.”

Fallon’s lead attorney—a silver-haired man with the bored expression of someone paid to be unimpressed—leaned forward. “A courtesy meeting with this many lawyers usually means your evidence is weaker than your opening statement. We’re listening.”

Margaux’s mouth curved. It was not a smile. It was the facial equivalent of a chess piece moving into checkmate position.

“Audio recording of Leif Cross, owner and operator of an unlicensed printing and forgery operation in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, conducted during a monitored transaction with Ms. Coleman.” She pressed play on the tablet at the center of the table.

Leif’s voice filled the room. Precise. Proud. Describing his process, his materials, his distribution network. Naming Prestige Restorations. Naming the pop-up channels. Signing a purchase agreement for twenty editions with complexity surcharges by era.

Fallon didn’t move. His expression held—the smile locked in place, the posture unchanged. But his hands, resting on the table, went still. Not relaxed-still. Fixed-still. The stillness of a man who was listening to the sound of his strategy unraveling and choosing, for now, to pretend he couldn’t hear it.

“Financial records tracing payments from Creed Capital Partners through three intermediary shells—A.C. Holdings, Apex Ventures Group, and North Atlantic Consulting—to accounts controlled by Leif Cross.” Margaux slid a bound document across the table. “The payment trail was compiled by forensic accountants at Harrison Coleman’s firm with supporting documentation from Sterling & Mane’s internal investigation.”

Harrison spoke for the first time. His voice was the warm baritone stripped of warmth—pure analysis, pure banker. “The shell structure is competent but not original. You used a layered consulting arrangement to classify the payments as vendor fees. The problem is the timing. The payments to Cross’s accounts began three weeks before your building acquisition closed. You were funding the forgeries to depress the commercial value of the property before you bought it. That’s not creative financing. That’s fraud.”

“Alleged fraud.” Fallon’s lead attorney placed a hand on the bound document without opening it.

“Documented fraud.” Harrison tapped the cover. “Page forty-seven. The timestamp on the first payment to Cross’s primary account, cross-referenced with the A.C. Holdings incorporation filing. The forgery operation was capitalized before the property deal closed. The building acquisition wasn’t opportunistic—it was the second phase of a coordinated scheme. First devalue the asset, then acquire it at a discount.” His dark eyes found Fallon’s. “I’ve structured financing arrangements for twenty years. I recognize the architecture. This one has your fingerprints on every load-bearing wall.”

Lark watched Fallon’s face. She’d spent three years recovering from the last time she’d sat across a table from this man, and she knew his tells the way she knew her own stores—through observation, repetition, and the hard-won attention that came from having been burned. His left hand was curling. The fingers drawing inward, millimeter by millimeter, the way they’d curled when she’d told him she was leaving and his response had been to triple-check the terms of his investment.

“Additionally.” Margaux pulled a second document from her folder. “Testimony from Kasper Eld, former member of the Sterling Pride, currently in custody. Mr. Eld has provided a detailed account of his recruitment and compensation by Creed Capital for the purposes of intimidation and physical violence against Ms. Coleman and members of the Sterling family.”

The smile wavered.

It was small—a twitch at the corner of his mouth, the kind of micro-expression that most people wouldn’t catch. Lark caught it.

There it is. The crack.

“Mr. Eld’s testimony,” Margaux continued, her voice steady as a metronome, “connects the physical assault—which resulted in injury to Ms. Coleman requiring medical treatment—directly to instructions received from a representative of Creed Capital. This elevates the matter from commercial fraud to criminal conspiracy involving bodily harm.”

Fallon’s attorneys shifted. A glance between the lead and his second—brief, professional, the silent language of a legal team recalculating. The bored expression on the silver-haired man’s face was no longer bored.

Vivienne had not spoken. She sat with her hands folded on the table, her dark eyes moving between Fallon and his legal team with patient attention. Three decades of watching people try to talk their way out of evidence. She didn’t need to speak. Her presence was the statement.

“The building acquisition through A.C. Holdings”—Margaux turned a page— “will be challenged under Section 349 of the General Business Law for deceptive practices and under applicable RICO provisions given the coordination between the fraud scheme and the real estate transaction. We anticipate the acquisition will be voided.”

“You’re overreaching.” Fallon’s voice was steady. The smile was back—thinner, tighter, the reinforced version deployed when the original cracked. “One disgruntled ex-employee’s testimony and some circumstantial financial patterns don’t constitute a RICO case.”

“One recording. One testimony. Fourteen authenticated forgeries with material chain-of-custody documentation. A building acquisition structured through shell companies with direct financial ties to the forgery operation. And medical records documenting three claw-mark lacerations sustained by my client during an assault carried out by an individual on your payroll.” Margaux closed her folder. “Shall I continue, or would you like to discuss terms?”

The room went quiet. The fluorescent hum of Creed Capital’s conference room filled the silence—cold, corporate, the ambient sound of institutional power stripped of everything that made it meaningful.

Lark stood.

She hadn’t planned to. The standing was instinctive—the same instinct that had carried her across a parking lot to shield Aspen, the same instinct that had built Villainette from an idea and a storefront, the same instinct that had kissed a Scandinavian lion on a Brooklyn rooftop and chosen him with her body and her nerve before his Pride chose her with ceremony. She stood because three years ago, she had sat across from this man and he had used her trust to pull the ground out from under her, and she had rebuilt everything he’d broken, and she was not going to deliver the final words from a chair.

“You thought I was still the woman you could control with a lease and a smile.” Her voice was level. Clear. The Coleman courtroom cadence—measured, precise, every word earning its place. “I’m not. I never was. You had better leverage.”