Joyce entered the Adebayo family home on a Tuesday morning carrying a laptop, two notebooks and a lie polished enough to sound like work.
David had hired her to review the strategy of the Adebayo Foundation. The arrangement gave Joyce exactly what she needed: legitimate access to old files, family stories, staff, photographs and Victoria herself. The gate, the guard, the staff who appeared before requests were spoken - Joyce no longer read those things as luxury. They were layers of access, and access was what she had come to breach. The arrangement also gave Victoria a front-row seat to the woman she believed was stealing her husband. Victoria recognized Joyce's fragrance before she allowed herself to recognize why—orange blossom, amber, vanilla. The same trace that had once clung to David's jacket.
"Mrs. Adebayo," Joyce said in the drawing room.
Victoria's smile was flawless. "Miss Williams." David looked between them. "Joyce is only here twice a week."
Victoria's smile deepened. "How reassuring."
Joyce heard the warning beneath it.
She also saw fear.
That mattered more.
The first morning produced nothing dramatic. Foundation reports. Donation records. Old programme photographs. Victoria stayed close enough to monitor every conversation without appearing to do so.
On Joyce's second visit, Daniel came through the front door calling for someone to help him find a missing car key. He stopped when he saw her.
"You must be the famous Joyce."
Joyce looked up. "Famous?"
"My mother doesn't like you."
"Daniel." Victoria's voice came sharply from behind them.
He grinned. "See?"
Up close, the resemblance was devastating.
Not to David.
To Amara.
Daniel had her dark, slightly deep-set eyes and Michael's broad bridge of nose. Joyce had spent so many months comparing photographs she had stopped wondering whether she imagined it.
Daniel caught her staring.
He had come from a product meeting and still carried a laptop bag over one shoulder. Joyce asked what he was building. His face changed immediately - animated, precise. He described an accessibility feature his team was testing for small-business merchants who used cheap Android phones.
"My father thinks I should be discussing cement margins," he said.
"Does he?"
"No. That's the annoying part. He says I should do what I want, so I can't even rebel properly."
Joyce smiled despite herself.
Daniel was not merely a blood result waiting to happen. He had a profession, jokes, frustrations and a father he trusted. The knowledge made the lie she was preparing to tell him later feel heavier.
"Do I have something on my face?"
"No."
"Then why are you looking at me like that?"
Joyce forced a laugh. "You remind me of someone."
"Who?"
A dead woman.
A grieving man.
A secret you never asked to carry.
"Someone I knew a long time ago."
Daniel considered her. "That's mysterious."
"Occupational hazard."
"Mum says you're a consultant."
"Your mother says many things about me."
Daniel laughed. "Now I definitely like you." He found his keys in the pocket of the jacket he was wearing and left while Victoria watched him with the exhausted disbelief of a mother whose adult child remained capable of losing objects attached to his body.
The ordinary intimacy of it hurt Joyce. This was why Grace had warned her.
Victoria had committed something monstrous.
Victoria also knew Daniel's coffee order, his allergies and the exact tone that made him check his pockets twice. Joyce had no column in her notes for that.
Later Joyce found the family portrait corridor. She moved slowly past years arranged in frames: David as a university graduate; Chief beside politicians; Victoria and David on their wedding day; Daniel at five, ten, sixteen.
Then the newborn photograph.
Victoria stood several feet behind her.
"He was beautiful," Joyce said.
"He still is."
Joyce studied the image. Victoria looked pale and carefully made up in a hospital bed. David leaned over her. Daniel was wrapped in blue.
"How old was he here?"
"Three days."
"You look remarkably well."
Silence.
Joyce kept her tone light. "My friend had a Caesarean last year and threatened to murder anybody who brought a camera near her for two weeks." Victoria's face hardened. "Women recover differently."
"True."
Joyce moved on.
She did not need to look back to know Victoria was staring at her. At the end of the afternoon, Victoria caught her alone near the staircase.
"Stay away from my son."
Joyce met her eyes. "I wasn't doing anything."
"Whatever game you are playing with David, Daniel is not part of it."
"What makes you think I'm playing a game?"
"Women like you always think the wife is the fool."
Joyce almost said, I did not come here to take your husband. But that was no longer entirely true.
"Maybe I'm looking for something else," she said.
Victoria's eyes narrowed. "What?"
Joyce held her gaze.
"The truth."
The colour drained from Victoria's face.
Less than a second.
It was enough.