His mistress came to apologize wearing my wedding dress, the exact ivory silk gown I had worn seven years earlier

Chloe turned her head slowly, looking out through the sea of flashing lights toward the corner of 54th Street.

There, sitting inside an idling, unmarked black sedan, was Grant.

He hadn't gotten out to help her. He hadn't stepped into the rain to shield his beloved mistress from the cameras or the law. When he saw that I had exposed the legal architecture of the shell companies—when he realized that Chloe was looking directly at him—he leaned forward, tapped the driver’s shoulder, and the black sedan abruptly accelerated into the traffic, leaving Chloe standing alone in the mud.

A collective gasp rippled through the gathering of reporters.

Chloe let out a sound that was half sob, half animal wail. She collapsed to her knees on the wet pavement, her hands covering her face as the flashbulbs strobed against her trembling body.

I did not look back down at her. I turned and walked through the revolving glass doors into the marble lobby of the tower.

On the fortieth floor, Marcus Vance was sitting behind his mahogany desk, his face gray and sickly under the fluorescent lights. Two private security officers stood by the door, arms crossed. On the desk lay three separate smart devices, completely disconnected from the network.

When I entered, Marcus did not stand. He looked like an old dog waiting for the vet's final injection.

"Vivian," he whispered, his voice trembling. "I can explain."

"You have five minutes to sign an irrevocable confession of corporate breach and surrender your license to practice law in the State of New York," I said, setting Thomas Cole’s binder on the desk between us.

"Vivian, Grant threatened me! He knew about my debts in Macau—"

"I don't care about your debts, Marcus," I cut him off, my voice colder than an Arctic wind. "I care about the eighteen million dollars currently sitting in escrow in Zurich. You are going to sign the release order transferring those funds back into the Hartwell Operating Trust. If you do, I will withhold the wire-fraud evidence from the Southern District of New York until eight o'clock tomorrow morning."

Marcus swallowed hard, his eyes darting to the binder. "And if I don't?"

"If you don't, the federal marshals will arrest you in this office before the market closes at four. Your family name will be destroyed, and your stepdaughter will spend the next fifteen years in a federal penitentiary for criminal conspiracy."