The candle in Ruby's study had burned down to a stub, but she didn't light another. Darkness suited what she was doing.
Spread across her desk were three sheets of paper, each one a small, deliberate lie. A ledger page, aged with tea stains and careful smudging, listing a sum paid to the Minister with a date that lined up too neatly with a public appearance Violet had made that same afternoon.
A letter, half-burned at the corner, bearing three lines in a hand that almost matched Violet's, almost, mentioning a meeting with Wayne at the old teahouse on Willow Street. And a torn scrap with a single damning phrase: tell no one, especially not Mia.
Ruby held the scrap up to what little light remained and smiled.
"Not enough to hang her," she murmured to herself, "just enough to make her sweat."
She had learned, a long time ago, that the most effective lies were the ones that never claimed too much. A confession forged in full would be examined, tested, and disproven.
