Chapter 1
The first time my stepmother tried to sell me, she served champagne and called it a family dinner.
By the time I understood the price of saving her company was supposed to be me, the doors were already locked.
I was twenty-four, seated across from Victor Shaw—a sixty-one-year-old investor with a polished smile and hands that looked like they'd never known a day of work.
My stepmother, Celeste Halden, sat beside him like she was presenting a quarterly report.
"Victor is prepared to cover our bridge financing," she said. "In return, you'll make the arrangement respectable."
"What arrangement?"
Victor lifted his glass. "Marriage eventually. Exclusivity immediately."
My stomach turned.
Halden Group had been my father's company before he died. Celeste claimed the business was collapsing because of the market. I knew better.
For six weeks, I'd quietly compared vendor payments against archived contracts. And I'd found millions—millions—routed through shell consultants linked to her brother.
"You cannot promise me to anyone," I said.
Celeste smiled. "Don't be childish. Your father left you eighteen percent. Victor wants stability. You sign your shares into the voting pool, stand beside him publicly, and everyone wins."
"Everyone except me."
Victor closed his hand around my wrist. "You haven't thought long term."
I pulled free. "Touch me again and you'll regret it."
Celeste laughed. "There's the little accountant pretending she has teeth."
That was her mistake.
She still saw the grieving daughter who kept her head down in finance. She didn't know I'd copied altered invoices, bank authorizations, and backdated board records. She didn't know three encrypted backups existed—one in a safety deposit box, one with my father's old lawyer, one in the cloud.
And she didn't know I'd scheduled one file to be released automatically if I failed to cancel it by midnight.
A dead man's switch. For when I couldn't speak for myself.
When I stood, two men appeared near the doors. Big men. Celeste's security.
"Sit down," Celeste ordered.
I ran.
I locked myself in the guest bathroom, smashed the narrow window with a marble soap dish, and climbed through. Glass cut my palm and my calf. Rain hit me as I dropped into the garden and sprinted toward the road.
Behind me, men shouted. Flashlights swept the trees.
Headlights appeared through the storm. A black sedan rounded the bend. I stepped into the road and threw both hands up.
The car stopped inches from me. The rear door opened.
A man in a dark coat looked at my bleeding feet, my torn dress, my wild eyes. Then at the figures running from Celeste's property.
"Get in," he said.
I did. Only after the locks clicked did I recognize him.
Adrian Cross. Founder of Cross Meridian Capital. The firm that had quietly bought most of Halden Group's debt that morning.
He looked at me. I looked at him.
"You're Emma Halden," he said.
"And you just bought my stepmother's company out from under her."
A corner of his mouth lifted. "So she hasn't told you yet."
The sedan pulled away. Behind us, Celeste's men reached the road just as we vanished around the bend.
Celeste taught me that power belonged to whoever controlled the room.
May you like
As the rain hammered the windows and Adrian Cross handed me a clean handkerchief for my bleeding hand, I realized she had never once asked what I'd learned while she ignored me.
And midnight was coming.
