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…

“State the coordinates for the record, Eleanor,” Callahan commanded, hitting the red record button on the console.

I took two steps forward, the transport chains clinking rhythmically against my steel belly-ring, my gaze locking onto Silas’s widening pupils.

“The property is the former Thorne Family Homestead,” I spoke into the microphone, my voice steady, clear, and ringing with absolute finality. “Parcel number 408-A, located on **Old Ironworks Pike**, nine miles outside Lexington, Kentucky.

“Behind the main residence, eighty yards along the eastern tree line, sits an abandoned corrugated steel equipment barn. Beneath the second bay of that barn, five feet beneath the subsoil, rests the body of Clara Thorne, entombed under twelve inches of reinforced concrete poured on the morning of June twelfth, 2019.”

Silas surged forward, his face hitting the glass partition with a concussive, vibrating thud.