I was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for my billionaire adoptive father’s death. As the guards prepared to take me away, my mother-in-law pretended to cry while my husband gently rested his hand on his pregnant mistress’s belly. They believed they’d stolen my freedom and gained control of a nearly $5 billion empire. I simply smiled and revealed one name: “Clara Thorne.” My husband’s expression changed instantly. Seconds later, the prosecutor shouted, “Stop the transfer!” But the secret surrounding his first wife’s disappearance five years earlier was only the beginning…

My chest seized. The breath left my lungs in a sharp, jagged gasp that burned my throat.

“My father…” The word shattered on my tongue. “My father was eighty-one years old. He had a pacemaker. He had a weak valve. You’re telling me someone poisoned him?”

“We’re not telling you someone poisoned him, Eleanor,” Callahan replied, sliding a glossy eight-by-ten crime-scene photograph across the table.

The image showed the small mahogany table beside my father’s reading chair in his library. Resting upon a silver coaster was the porcelain cup I had bought him in Kyoto three summers ago. Beside the cup sat his daily pill organizer.

“We pulled eighteen latent fingerprints from the medication tray,” Callahan said, tapping the plastic container with his pen. “Every single one belongs to you.”

“Of course they belong to me!” I shouted, the chain of my handcuffs rattling violently against the steel table. “I filled that organizer every Sunday evening! I managed his prescriptions, his cardiologist appointments, his diet—I’ve taken care of him since I was twenty-two!”

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