At 11:47 on Christmas Eve, my husband accidentally sent me a photograph of himself with another woman—by sunrise, his billionaire life would be missing everything he thought he owned.

Arthur pulled the phone from his jacket, glancing casually at the screen. But as his eyes scanned the text, the smile instantly dropped from his weathered face.

The color drained from his cheeks so completely that I set my champagne glass down on the stone balustrade.

"Arthur?" I asked, my instincts immediately flaring into alert. "What is it?"

He didn't answer right away. He tapped the screen twice, his fingers visibly trembling, and held the phone to his ear.

"Verify the origin," Arthur commanded into the phone, his voice hushed and urgent. "Which offshore bank? ... When was the transfer cleared? ... No, that’s impossible. Richard Bennett closed that account twenty years ago."

I pulled Lily closer to my chest. "Arthur! Talk to me. What’s going on?"

Arthur lowered the phone, looking at me with wide, unsettled eyes.

"Lauren," he whispered, glancing around to make sure none of the party guests were within earshot. "A wire transfer just hit the Bennett National Trust’s primary holding account. Fifty million dollars."

"Fifty million?" I repeated, bewildered. "From where? Cole had no money left."

"It didn't come from Cole," Arthur said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "The wire was routed through an unlisted private trust in Zurich. And the signatory on the transfer... Lauren, the authorization code belongs to someone who was supposed to be dead."

Before I could process his words, a sleek, black limousine with tinted windows pulled smoothly past the estate's outer security checkpoint without triggering an alarm—as if the driver possessed the master security codes that only my father had ever known.