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…

I looked at him.

I looked at the liver spots on Beatrice’s throat, at the stolen emerald resting against her chest, at Khloe’s smug, empty smile.

I did not scream. I did not cry.

I slowly, deliberately lowered the black plastic receiver back onto its metal cradle.

I stood up from the stool.

I leaned down to the intercom grille at the bottom of the glass, looked straight into my husband’s laughing eyes, and spoke five words:

“Thank you for the map, Silas.”

Chapter 4: The Shattered Glass

The following morning at 9:55 AM, the observation holding wing of the Metropolitan Detention Center was bathed in the harsh, clinical light of six high-output halide floodlamps.

I stood in the center of the intake vestibule, dressed in a standard orange corrections jumpsuit, my wrists and ankles secured by high-tensile transport chains connected to a heavy steel belly-chain around my waist.

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