ith T-minus one month to go before our official presentation to society, I caught Lily curled up on the window seat on the second-floor landing, her tablet in her lap. After Campbell had revealed the truth—the real truth—about who had hit Colt Ryan, I’d come clean to my cousin about the events that had sent her ex into a downward spiral.

A month and a half later, Lily was still reeling. This wasn’t the first time I’d caught her staring furtively at one of her old Secrets entries. It was, however, the first time I’d caught her fixated on the final post—the lone photo of Campbell.

“ ‘He made me hurt you.’ ” Lily looked up from the tablet, her brown eyes searching mine. “He as in the senator, you as in Walker.”

“I’m not proud of what I did to my brother.” The conversation I’d had with Campbell the night I’d climbed the gate at the Ames estate came back to me. It had been the first of many, and they all boiled down to a single, crystal-clear point: “But I will take a lot of pride in bringing my father down.”

“He as in the senator,” I echoed Lily. “You as in Walker. That’s one interpretation.”

“Maybe I was talking about Walker when I wrote those words.” I could still see the subtle, serpentine smile working its way first to one side then to the other of Campbell’s lips. “But to a jury? It’s going to look like I was talking about Nick.”

Campbell had said, that night on the lawn, that she wasn’t framing Nick. Slowly, I’d pieced together the real plan: framing daddy dearest for framing Nick. Piece by piece and move by move, she was laying a trap, one that would result in the truth coming out about the hit and run in a way that not even a powerful senator could counteract.

“I’m doing this for Walker,” Campbell had told me. “I’m doing this because Daddy would never expect it of me.”

Campbell didn’t know who our father had called to handle the police that night, or what the person on the other end of the line had done to take care of the “problem.” She did know that if she went to the authorities now, she could easily be dismissed as a spoiled teenager making up lies—a silly little girl, desperate for Daddy’s attention.

But if Campbell could make it look like the senator had stolen the pearls for the purpose of framing Nick, because Nick was asking questions and getting too close to the truth? If she waited until the evidence against our father was ironclad, and then admitted that he was the one who’d hit Nick’s brother?

Suddenly, the senator’s scandalous daughter might start looking more credible than her father.

“I want in.” That was what I’d told Campbell. She’d replied—more than once—that she neither needed nor wanted my help.

But here we were.

“Girls!” Aunt Olivia called from downstairs.

Lily closed the cover of the tablet. “Coming!” She turned to me, and I knew what she was going to say before she said it. “I still think we should tell Walker the truth.”

So did I.

So did Campbell.

“Not yet.”

Campbell was in the back seat that night. The newly minted Mrs. Waters had spared no expense on her wedding—and that meant an open bar. They weren’t checking IDs, so Campbell had made use of it. So had Walker.

So had almost everyone in attendance.

As Lily and I sat in the back of Aunt Olivia’s car, I turned the story over in my mind, the way I had countless times, working in new details as I’d pulled them from Campbell. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to imagine it—repeatedly, visually imagine it.

Maybe because, in a different life, with one key change eighteen years earlier, it might have been me in the back of that car—or it might have been both of us.

Campbell was slumped, halfway unconscious, across the seat lengthwise. Walker was equally out of it in the passenger seat. Their father was talking—lecturing. Family honor and self-control and blah, blah, blah. The senator expected better of Walker. Any man worth his mettle knew his limits.

Only the senator didn’t. Not really, because at some point in the drive, he’d allowed the car to drift into the next lane.

Oncoming traffic. Campbell saw headlights, and the next thing she knew, her father jerked the wheel to the right.

Too far to the right.

The sound the car made as it hit something wasn’t a thump. It wasn’t a crunch. Campbell let her eyes close again as her father opened the driver’s side door. Let Mr. Hypocritical High-and-Mighty, who’d expected better of Walker, figure this one out.

She hadn’t known, at that point, that the object they’d hit was a person.

“Are you two excited?” Aunt Olivia asked as she pulled into the parking lot. “Of course you are. After all of this time and all of those fittings—you’ll actually get to try your dresses on!”

The Symphony Ball was rapidly approaching. Each and every copy of the designated gown had been ordered, altered, and hand-sewn to exact specifications. This was the last fitting—the one where we actually saw the results of all the others.

“I am so excited,” I deadpanned, “that I can hardly stand it.”

“Oh, hush, you.” Aunt Olivia’s enthusiasm remained fully intact. “And remember: if you see Charlotte Ames, tell her how much you love the dresses.”

“It’s nice to see you three on such good terms.” Charlotte Ames was indeed present inside the tailor shop. Thus far, the senator’s wife had called the Symphony Ball gowns “a bit full” and “classic in a refreshingly ordinary kind of way.” Now she’d transitioned from subtle jabs at Aunt Olivia to focusing on Campbell, Sadie-Grace, and Lily—and blatantly ignoring me. “Just like old times,” she continued blithely.

Something tells me you wouldn’t be so glad to see them acting like such good buddies if you knew why.

Lily didn’t keep secrets from Sadie-Grace, and that meant that Lily’s best friend knew what we knew, and she was just as determined as we were to help Walker and Nick—even if that meant helping Campbell, too.

“That dress does flatter you, Sadie-Grace, sweetheart.” ­Charlotte Ames shook her head fondly, then turned back to the other ­mothers. “Then again,” she said for Aunt Olivia’s benefit, “what dress wouldn’t?”

Beside me, Campbell cut a sharp glance toward Sadie-Grace, who was looking distinctly jittery in the wake of the compliment.

“Be nice,” I told Campbell.

“Aren’t I always?”

Lily slid in beside us. With deft hands, she combed her fingers through Campbell’s hair and swept it back into an elegant twist. Campbell relaxed slightly under her touch, then caught herself. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me, Lily Taft.”

Lily had made it very clear that she was in this for Walker’s sake, but there were moments like this one where the remnants of her friendship with Campbell were evident, too.

“You should wear your hair back to the ball.” Lily let the other girl’s red tresses drop gently back to her shoulders and moved past her to the mirror. “And don’t worry. I wouldn’t dream of feeling sorry for you.”

“We need them,” I reminded Campbell. She’d been reluctant to accept my help, let alone anyone else’s—but this wasn’t a two-person job.

“This isn’t a fairy tale, sister dear.” That was what Campbell had said to me, as she’d begrudgingly let me in on the details. “This is a revenge story, and it’s going to be epic.”

Across the room, Charlotte Ames narrowed her eyes at the two of us. Part of the reason I’d been able to convince Campbell that we needed Lily was that the senator’s wife would have put up a much bigger fuss about Campbell spending all of her free time with me.

Turning away from me, Campbell walked toward the three-way mirror. She waited until all four of us were standing in front of it—and out of earshot of her mother, Aunt Olivia, and Greer—before she cut to the chase. “They made the arrest today.” She met her reflection’s gaze. “Daddy has been pressing for it. Nick is in custody as we speak.”

The thought of Nick behind bars made my stomach heavy.

“This is a good thing, Sawyer.” Campbell’s elevated brow challenged me to argue with that statement. “You know that.”

I knew that Campbell’s original plan had involved Nick being let go. When the senator had intervened to have the case reopened, she’d decided to use that to her advantage. Objectively, I recognized the fact that the way the senator had been pressuring people to make this arrest would work in our favor. I knew, as well as Campbell did, how that interference, once it came to light, would look.

Senator Ames committed the theft to frame Nick, who was getting too close to the truth about his previous crimes. When that didn’t work, he used his political sway to engineer the arrest.

That was the story we wanted to tell.

“How long until we can pull the trigger?” I asked, smoothing my hands over the front of my gown and trying to look like I actually cared whether or not it succeeded in giving me the appearance of boobs.

“Sawyer! Don’t you dare smudge that fabric.”

Aunt Olivia had eagle eyes. I let my hands fall back to my sides and waited for Campbell to answer the question.

“It could be weeks still,” Campbell murmured, turning slightly to one side and then the other, inspecting the dress from each angle. “We’ll only have one shot at this.”

The fact that she’d said we was a miracle—and not a minor one. To my surprise, Campbell followed that up by combing her fingers through Sadie-Grace’s hair, the way Lily had through hers, arranging it just so around the startled girl’s face.

“The closer we get to a trial,” I murmured, “the more rope we give the senator to hang himself.” I knew that. It didn’t mean I had to like it.

“I suppose we’re supposed to just sit around and wait?” Lily rose up to the balls of her feet. “Heels?” she called back to her mother.

“Two inches.”

Lily adjusted her stance. I tuned out Aunt Olivia and focused on Campbell. My mind went back to that night—the one she’d described to me, the one I couldn’t get out of my head.

Campbell’s eyes were closed. She didn’t open them until she heard her father on the passenger side of the car. He dragged Walker out from his seat and over to the driver’s side.

When Campbell realized what was going on, she threw her own car door open, bent to the ground, and puked.

And that was when she saw Colt’s body.

“The three of you will have to take care of Nick,” Campbell murmured.

“Take care of him?” Sadie-Grace asked, wide-eyed and cautious as Campbell stopped playing with her hair. “Like… mob-style?”

Campbell laid one hand lightly on Lily’s shoulder and the other on Sadie-Grace’s and leaned forward conspiratorially—like the three of them were just BFFs. “Get him a lawyer. A good one.”

“How would a teenager go about hiring a lawyer?” I asked, catching sight of the four of us in the mirror: a quartet of girls in white gowns, pure as the driven snow.

Campbell stepped back from the rest of us. “You’ll figure it out,” she murmured. “And I will handle everything else.”