Who Is Sylvie Bramwell

It took four officers, a raised voice, and eleven long minutes before Corinne stopped insisting this was all a misunderstanding.

Graham arrived halfway through, still in yesterday's clothes, having driven straight from an overnight work trip the moment Marlowe called. He stood on the lawn in the strange blue morning light, watching his wife get read her rights, and Marlowe watched something in him break and start trying to rebuild itself in real time.

"Tell me it's not true," he said, voice cracking. "Tell me."

Corinne didn't answer him. She looked instead at Nell, still buckled in the backseat, being gently coaxed out by a female officer, and something cold slid over her features — the mask finally dropping all the way.

"You should have just called me Mom," she said, almost pleasant, almost sad. "It would've been so much easier for everyone."

The words landed in the driveway like a confession all their own.

While Corinne sat handcuffed in the back of a patrol car, Halston searched the trunk she'd already packed — standard procedure before impound. Beneath the duffel bags, tucked into a hard-shell case she'd clearly meant to take with her, he found a small velvet pouch.

Inside: a second locket, older, tarnished silver, engraved with initials that weren't Ilsa's. And a photograph, soft and creased from years of folding — a smiling woman holding a toddler, a man's arm around her shoulders. On the back, in faded pen, a name.

Halston checked it against the driver's license he'd taken from Corinne's purse. Different name. Different woman, according to the paper trail — except for the face, which was unmistakably the same one now watching him through the patrol car window with something like relief that the waiting was finally over.

"Ma'am," he said slowly, walking the photograph over to the car, "you want to tell me who Sylvie Bramwell is? Because best I can tell, she's been gone a lot longer than Ilsa Voss ever was."

Corinne — or whoever she really was — finally smiled, small and unbothered, like she'd spent eight months waiting for someone to ask the right question at last.