For five long seconds, the only sound in the whole penthouse was the slow ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.

“That’s, that’s impossible,” Beatrice stammered, her voice dropping an octave into pure, disbelieving panic.

“He never, he didn’t have another family.

Our mother was his only wife.

He never—”

“He left my mother and me forty-five years ago,” I said, holding my head high, “to marry into your mother’s money.

He spent his entire life running away from that sin.

And in the end, he realized that the three children he raised with all that stolen wealth had turned out to be people who could not even be bothered to hold his hand while he died.” Julian’s own lawyer pulled hard on his client’s arm, his face gray.