THE NIGHT CLAIRE TOOK BACK EVERYTHING

Claire had been told there was no first wife.

In Ryan's version of his life, there had been prep school, Yale, a reckless decade building Whitmore Capital, and then Claire. He had described every former relationship as brief and unimportant. When Claire once found an old photograph of him wearing a wedding band, he said it belonged to a costume party.

Now Brooke dragged her into the service elevator and pressed the button for the parking garage.

"Her name was Evelyn Shaw," Brooke said. "They married in Connecticut when Ryan was twenty-seven. It lasted eight months."

"Where is she?"

Brooke looked at the descending numbers. "That depends on which lie you believe."

Above them, the alarm began to howl. Grant had overridden the study lock.

The elevator stopped at the forty-eighth floor.

The doors opened on Ryan.

He must have taken the private staircase. His tie was gone and blood marked his lower lip where Claire had struck him. He put one hand between the doors before they could close.

"Brooke, step out."

"No."

"This is between my wife and me."

Claire held her phone where he could see it. "The recording is already backed up."

It was a bluff. The penthouse network had gone down with the lights, and the upload icon still spun uselessly. Ryan could not know that.

His gaze shifted to the phone, then to Claire's belly. "I was protecting you upstairs. Dad wanted to scare you. I held you because I thought you might fall."

"You pinned my arms."

"Everything happened quickly."

"The money happened slowly. Explain that."

Ryan's expression tightened. "Maya is manipulating you. Your father never trusted the Whitmores, so he hired a lawyer who would keep his paranoia alive after his death."

The mention of her father hurt more than Claire expected. Samuel Mercer had died eleven months earlier, leaving her a collection of commercial properties and an investment company she barely understood. Ryan had offered to manage everything while she grieved. Claire had signed stacks of documents because the man beside her had been her husband.

Brooke pressed the close button. Ryan pushed harder against the door.

"Ask him about Northstar," Brooke said.

Ryan froze.

Claire saw it.

"What is Northstar?"

"Nothing," he said too quickly.

"It was Evelyn's favorite word," Brooke said. "She had it engraved inside her wedding ring. Then it became the name of a company that received millions from Claire's trust. Interesting coincidence, isn't it?"

Ryan grabbed Brooke's wrist.

Claire brought the edge of her phone down across his knuckles. He recoiled, and the doors shut.

They descended.

"Tell me everything," Claire demanded.

"Not here."

"You have until the garage."

Brooke wrapped both arms around herself. "Evelyn discovered that Dad was moving client money through shell companies. Ryan begged her to stay quiet. Three days later, her car went off a bridge. They said she had been drinking. She never drank."

"Did she die?"

"They never found her body."

The doors opened.

A black town car waited with its rear door open. Maya Torres stood beside it in a dark wool coat, one hand inside her handbag. She was forty, compact, and normally impossible to surprise. Tonight, she looked alarmed.

"Get in," Maya said.

Claire did not move. "How did you know where I was?"

"Your father required a safety alert on the penthouse deed. Any attempted change of ownership triggers my office. Ryan filed one at eleven fifty-three tonight."

"He tried to transfer the penthouse?"

"Not transfer. Mortgage. For forty-two million dollars."

Brooke made a strangled sound.

Footsteps echoed from the elevator lobby.

Maya opened the rear door wider. "Questions in the car. Now."

They sped out of the garage as Ryan reached the ramp. He stood under the fluorescent lights, the black drive still clenched in his fist, watching Claire leave.

Maya handed Claire a tablet. The screen showed a map of transfers from Mercer Legacy Holdings into six companies. At the center was Northstar Advisory Group.

"How much?" Claire asked.

"What I can prove tonight? Eighteen million. What I suspect? More than sixty."

Claire's stomach tightened. "There wasn't sixty million in the accounts Ryan managed."

"No. But there was in the employee pension fund attached to your father's manufacturing company."

Claire stared at her. "That money belongs to eight hundred workers."

"Yes."

The baby kicked again, sharp and insistent.

"Call the police," Brooke said.

Maya shook her head. "We will. But first we need the ledger on Ryan's drive. Without it, Grant will blame Ryan, Ryan will blame a dead accountant, and the money will disappear forever."

Claire looked back through the rear window at the shrinking tower.

"Then we get the drive."

Maya's phone rang. The caller identification showed PENTHOUSE SECURITY.

She answered on speaker.

No guard spoke. Instead, Grant's voice filled the car.

"Claire, you have something that belongs to me. Brooke. Bring her back, and perhaps your child will still have a family."

Claire's blood went cold.

Brooke leaned toward the phone. "You burned Mom, didn't you?"

Silence.

Then Grant laughed.