The Wicked Step Mother

Paper rustled against the dark mahogany desk as Kaelen Voss turned the final page of the dossier for the third time.

Outside his floor-to-ceiling windows, the Manhattan skyline glittered through the glass, cold and indifferent. Under the steady light of his desk lamp, the stark reality of Talia Barrett’s life sat exposed across twenty crisp pages.

The financial breakdown was brutal. Her mother,